Andy Napier leads the Hoppers charge with team mates in support last week at Stourbridge.
Preston Grasshoppers vs. Huddersfield – Kick Off 2.30PM
Team News
Just one change to the pack from last weeks starting line up with Reece Tomlinson returning after suspension replacing Jack Banks who’s recovering from a head injury.
In the backs Anthony Elliott isn’t available so Skipper Phil Baines moves to the wing position with Billy Woof moving from the bench into the centres with Harry Reddick taking his place.
The bench also sees the return of player/forwards coach Alan Holmes after a long spell out with an ankle injury who will be making his fiftieth appearance for Preston Grasshoppers.
1 Oga Mabaya, 2 Phil Mills, 3 Pete Altham, 4 Reece Tomlinson, 5 Ally Murray, 6 Andy Napier, 7 Will Lees, 8 Chris Taylor, 9 Sam Whyte, 10 Lewis Allen, 11 Phil Baines (Captain), 12 Billy Woof, 13 Sam Russell, 14 Scott Jordan, 15 Mark Murray.
Replacements:
16 Alan Holmes, 17 Tom McGuinness, 18 Jack Walker, 19 Sam Kindred, 20 Harry Reddick.
Huddersfield have announced the following starting fifteen and bench:
15 Tom Hodson, 14 Elliot Hodgson, 13 Ben Mitchell, 12 Tom Owen, 11 Charlie Martin, 10 Chris Bell, 9 Joel Hinchcliffe, 1 Alex Battye, 2 Henry Walker, 3 Laurence Sanderson, 4 Austen Thompson, 5 Adam Malthouse, 6 Gareth Lewis, 7 Ben Hoyle, 8 Nick Sharpe.
Replacements:
16 Richard Brown, 17 Dan Jeffrey, 18 Ross Thornton, 19 James Purcell, 20 Dave Hall.
Preview
Hoppers host a old adversaries Huddersfield this coming Saturday who are making a good fist of their return to National 2 North after a single season in North 1 last season.
The Tykes look to be having a rather better time of things at Lockwood Park than on their travels, drawing with title chasing Ampthill just a few weeks ago until rather surprisingly losing for the first time this season last week to Birmingham Solihull. They don’t seem to have had much success on their travels however with just one win early on in the season at Leicester Lions and have the dubious honour of giving bottom of the league Stockport their only win so far this season.
Garth Dew will be hoping his side can bring their try scoring form from last week at Stourton Park with them into this week’s game. Lewis Allen was lethal with ball in hand scoring two terrific tries and playing a part in others. Hopefully he can carry this form forward and celebrate his fiftieth League game for Hoppers with a similar performance. His twenty one point haul took his personal tally of League Points for Preston Grasshoppers up to two hundred and sixty four, which includes ten tries.
Lewis is twelfth in the all time League Points Scoring list which is headed by Paul Bailey who accrued nine hundred and seventy nine so Lewis still has some way to go although he’s about half way to reaching Sean Taylor’s total of five hundred and eight, Steve Kerry’ five hundred and twenty five and Chris Glynn’s five hundred and forty five who holds second place in the list of league points scorers.
Other notable achievements in the last two games have seen Sam Russell score his first try for the club at Stourbridge along with Harry Moulding, Jack Banks and Tahir El Mahidi from the previous week against Luctonians.
‘Cookie’ on his way to the try line against Luctonians
Harry Moulding secures a bonus point win against Luctonians the other week
Banksy after scoring against Luctonians
After being promoted into National N2 seven seasons ago, games against Huddersfield had resulted in home victories until the Lightfoot Green fixture back in December 2011 when the visitors broke the sequence with a seven point (and their first ever) League win at Lightfoot Green. The old trend continued though in the return fixture when Huddersfield ran out three point winners in a sixty seven points fest at Lockwood Park near the end of the season.
Meetings between the two clubs go back to the late 1950’s when Hoppers made the first journey over the Pennines to play Huddersfield on the 29th of March 1958 at The Waterloo Ground, which is now occupied by a Morrisons Supermarket.
It wasn’t a lucky trip for the travellers as the home team ran out comprehensive victors, 29 points to 9; in fact it took eight visits to Huddersfield before Hoppers eventually gained a win there in 1965.
The playing record between this week’s opponents sits in favour of Huddersfield by twenty nine victories against twenty four to Hoppers with two matches ending all square and one being cancelled. Meetings in Preston however are in favour of the home team with seventeen victories against ten and both drawn games being played at Lea. The standings in League encounters couldn’t be any closer with both clubs having five victories apiece.
There have been a couple of other meeting between the two teams, they were both pre-season practice games at Lockwood Park. The first before the start of the 2003/04 season when Hoppers ran riot, winning 79-19. This was however small consolation at the end of the season when we were relegated to North 1. The second one was before last season’s league fixtures commenced and was a much closer affair with the visitors running our winners twenty six points to twenty one.
Photographs by kind permission of Colin Taylor & Mike Craig.
