WELCOME I am delighted to welcome back to Acklam Park our old friends and neighbours West Hartlepool. It's four years since we last met, in N3N, when we managed to win both matches, 15-7 at West and 12-3 in a penalty-dominated home game. Unfortunately for our visitors last season they won only four of their games and finished bottom of the league, 27 points behind Bradford & Bingley in the last 'safe' spot. This season, however, they are obviously determined to do better, gaining an admirable 24-6 victory at Northern in the seasons opener before entertaining Morpeth at Brinkburn last week, when, despite Morpeth scoring first, they won 36-15. West earned their bonus point before half time, and although Morpeth had two players sin-binned in the first half I'm sure it had no effect on the final result.

LEAGUE RUGBY Our season got off to a good start with a win against newly-promoted Alnwick. However early play was pretty even and then after 20 minutes, in a flash we were seven points down. Fortunately we equalised almost immediately when Richie Lonsdale powered over and Simon added the conversion; he also kicked a penalty before half time to give us a slender lead at the break. We added tries from Connor Foley and Adam Nolson, both converted by Simon, who popped over another penalty for good measure to give us a comfortable win in the end.

This was followed by last week's disappointing result at Wheatley Hills. First of all the bus broke down en route to Doncaster. We arrived late but the referee insisted on kicking off at the appointed hour. As a result of our rusty limbs we were 29-3 down at half time but the second half was an all together different affair. We scored a try by Phil Harland, and for a long time it looked as though that would be the only score, but we conceded a late try to skew the scoreline just a bit. The game was summed up neatly by our redoubtable team manager – in the first half we were the better team for the first five minutes but in the second half we were the better team for the first 35 minutes. Unfortunately we lost Peter Wright before half time, as well as Simon Moore in the second half. For more information on both games see Terry Fitzpatrick's reports on page 16.

And spare a thought for Acklam, who are finding out the hard way the difference between Durham/Northumberland 1 and Yorkshire 1. Darlington were originally allocated to move from D/N 1 into the Yorkshire structure to balance numbers (just as Rochdale have been moved into our league) but they successfully appealed the decision, and unfortunately for our close neighbours Acklam took the hit. Faced with away games at York and then Scarborough they have conceded 22 tries and 140 points in the opening two matches, whilst scoring seven.

CLUB NEWS The results blackboard was a welcome sight on the opening weekend of our league programme, At the top of course was our win against Alnwick, followed by a fine victory for our Wasps at Horden,never an easy place to get a good result. The 'A' team were without a game but the Lions were hosts to Guisborough, and won 27-12, the same score as the 1st team. The U17s match against West was cancelled, and the U13s lost against Billingham, but the rest of the Juniors did the Club proud. The U16s travelled across the Pennines and beat both Penrith and Carlisle, 56-12 and 19-12 respectively, the U15s entertained us in a thrilling match at home,winning 21-19 at the very end of play, whilst the U14s made a determined effort not to give us any worries – they returned from Penrith 62-7 victors. An all round satisfactory weekend.

We were without rugby at Acklam Park last Saturday. The Wasps were due to entertain
Blaydon but our opponents cried off on Thursday afternoon. The 'A' team weren't due to begin their season until today (they're at Stockton for a Tees Valley league match) and the Lions went over to play Hartlepool, but returned with a 29-5 defeat.

But what about the Colts? Both the Junior Colts (U17s) and Senior Colts (U18s) are now up and running. Bearing in mind all our concerns about low numbers at the start of the season, especially for the U18s (we didn't run an U17s side last year), this is good news indeed. To quote Jonno a week past Friday: “In a nutshell so far so good. This coming weekend we aim to have over 30 boys playing U18s rugby, which is fantastic. After a lot of phone calls, face book messaging and general begging over the summer months we have seen seventeen U18s at training. Some of those are John Burridge’s old boys, some are new to the game entirely and some are returning to the game after playing it at school. From an U17 point of view we have seen approximately 24 boys. In addition we have had some lads making noises about coming back to play once other commitments and injuries are out of the way. The coaching team are delighted with these numbers.” And those two games? Great news – the 18s went to Westoe, a stronghold of Colts rugby, and won 27-24; John Burridge's report is on p4. And then on Sunday the U17s beat Blyth 39-10. It was a pretty one-sided first half with the score at 22-0, but a much more even second period, which we won 17-10! The weather didn't help – after the break we had severe rain storms to go with the howling gale.

JUNIORS I have mentioned previously that we are one of five Satellite Academies established by Leeds Carnegie across the County for U13s-U15s, and that the first of their elite players sessions here at Acklam Park was to be held on Monday 9 September. It turned out to be a cracking evening; Leeds’ coaches, players and physios came along and the turn-out by the young players was very heartening, with boys from several clubs and schools in the area attending. Not so heartening was the news on Friday that the U14s and U16s from Huddersfield had cancelled their matches here last Sunday.

SPONSORS I'm sure the ale will flow freely today; our sponsor is Heinekin! Regional Manager Peter Robinson has a foot in both camps this afternoon, having successfully introduced into Acklam Park a range of beers and lager, and having spent much of his playing career at West, where he captained the Club. Indeed he still does a bit of coaching at Brinkburn. In fact Peter has a foot in four camps! He also played cricket for Hartlepool, the team playing Middlesbrough (weather permitting) on the cricket square this very afternoon. So, killing two birds with one stone, Peter is sponsoring both matches. In thanking Peter for his support I hope he and his guests enjoy what must be a unique occasion.

On behalf of everyone at the Club, to all of our sponsors, can I say a huge 'thank you' for your support in advertising in our programme, sponsoring matches and taking advertising boards around the pitch. Your support is very much appreciated. The funds from sponsorship allow us to provide the best facilities we can for over 450 rugby players, from six year-olds upwards. We are, and with your help will continue to be, a thriving hotbed of rugby for people of all ages and ability. Again, thank you all.

REFEREE'S CORNER I am delighted to welcome to Acklam Park today’s referee Oliver Mantle, a school economics teacher from the Yorkshire Society who spent many happy years playing fly-half at Harrogate and who has been a referee for eight years. He has been to Acklam Park before, last refereeing our game against Sheffield two seasons ago, (in fact he last refereed a school match this morning!) and I hope he enjoys his return visit today.

Incidentally, I see that the RFU and Premier Rugby have joined together to hire former referee Geraint Ashton Jones as an independent consultant charged with evaluating the performance of referees in all six of the Premiership matches each weekend, spotting faults as well as detecting trends. It struck me that if the powers-that-be are interested in adopting a similar approach for the lower leagues, we have just the man for the job, our very own President, Stuart Micklewright. An acknowledged student of the finer points of refereeing Stuart would be ideal. As an aside, I can report that two weeks ago he was well satisfied, in fact very pleased with Simon Parks, here for the first time to take charge of our opening match against Alnwick.