Preston Grasshoppers are on the road again this Saturday with another trip to the Midlands and Broadstreet’s Ivor Preece ground near Coventry no doubt full of confidence after their victory at Stourbridge last week, their first there after four consecutive fruitless visits with the last success back in the promotion season to National 1 during January 1999.
The home side are still without a win this season and have just one bonus point to their name. But a word of caution to Hoppers that apart from Sale, the home side’s four other opponents all feature in the top six of the current league table including the leading pair of Macclesfield and Sedgley Park.
Hoppers will take the victory at Stourton Park last week with them to Broadstreet and hope they can break their duck at the Ivor Preece Field ground where they are without a win from all previous visits they have made. The last of these was a particularly poor performance last season after which the backlash resulted in a short run of three victories from four outings.
This will be Preston Grasshoppers fourth visit to the club which is situated close to Coventry and if selected Alex Zavallis-Roebuck will have fond memories from Hoppers best result there in a ten all draw on the 7th of November 2009 when ‘Zav’ scored all the points, converting a penalty try plus a three-pointer.
The first meeting between Broadstreet and Hoppers was on the 19th of October 2002 at Lightfoot Green when the home side ran out winners by thirty four points to twenty. The reverse fixture gave ‘Street’ their first victory to date over Hoppers, twenty six points to twenty. Olly Viney, Gary Monaghan and Paul Bailey scoring a try each for the visitors.
Broadstreet gained promotion from Midlands 1 a couple of seasons ago as champions by a comfortable seventeen point margin and although they started last season somewhat unsteadily, they recovered with a run of good results and ended the season in the top half of the table. During last season the home side had close links with National 1 club Coventry and no doubt benefited from the situation.
There have been just six meetings between the two clubs in the past with Hoppers winning three, Broadstreet two and as mentioned earlier in this piece a ten all draw being played out at Ivor Preece Field.
Photo by kind permission of Mike Craig – Sean Taylor moved into 2nd place in Hoppers League Points table above Chris Glynn after his twenty points haul at Stourbridge last week.
