Preston Grasshoppers travel to the Wirral and Paton Field the home of Caldy RUFC this coming Saturday and their first away trip of the New Year for what will be another tough assignment, this time against the current league leaders.
Hoppers hosts are on an impressive run of form at the moment, with a nine game winning run since they drew with South Leicester back in October. The home side remain undefeated since their colours were lowered by Sedgley Park in the opening game of the season whilst their opponents haven’t tasted success since early November when they overturned Sheffield Tigers.
The League Championship looks like it’s Caldy’s to lose, whilst Hoppers will be looking for what would be a big upset with bottom beating top on their own ground.
There was no lack of effort from Preston Grasshoppers last Saturday against the Cheshire County’s City side Chester, but the visitors crisp passing plus clinical finishing from far less opportunities was the crucial difference.
The Inaugural senior game against this weekend’s opponents was a pre-season warm-up fixture at Lightfoot Green prior to the 2004/5 season. Caldy had climbed the league ladder with a succession of promotions from the depths of South Lancashire and Cheshire 3, eventually gaining promotion to N2N as Champions of North 1 in 2007.
There have been nineteen league meetings between the two clubs, all in consecutive seasons since Caldy’s last promotion and it is they who currently holding the upper hand. Hoppers will be looking to upset the form book and reduce the current seven wins to eleven margin in games against Caldy and equal or even improve on last season’s drawn encounter at Paton Field.
The first league meeting was in the Wirral back on the 6th of October 2007 when Hoppers turned around a narrow half time deficit to eventually run out winners by twenty points to sixteen.
Photograph courtesy of Mike Craig.
