Richard Morton & Alan Holmes make their presence felt during last season’s encounter in Fulwood
Sedgley Park vs. Preston Grasshoppers – Kick Off 2.30pm
Team News
It’s all change again this weekend as Garth Dew’s squad travel to Sedgley Park.
Now fully fit Phil Mills and John Peterson start in the front row and the returning Chris Taylor starting at Number Eight. Brad Tuff and Rich Morton take a turn on the bench along with Will Lees. Meanwhile the backs line up as last week against Ampthill apart from Billy Woof coming in to make his debut after scoring a hat trick of tries last Saturday at Rochdale replacing Jack Ward who moves to the bench.
1 John Peterson, 2 Phil Mills, 3 Danny Madden, 4 Reece Tomlinson, 5 Ally Murray, 6, Andy Napier, 7 Jack Walker, 8 Chris Taylor, 9 Sam Whyte, 10 Ollie Carter,11 Sam Kendall,12 Billy Woof,13 Phil Baines (Captain),14 Lewis Allen, 15 John Embleton.
Replacements:
16 Brad Tuff, 17 Jack Ward, 18 Richard Morton, 19 Sam Kindred, 20 Will Lees.
Preview
Hoppers face another tough assignment this week when they take to the road once again, this time for their shortest away league journey of the season to Park Lane the home of Sedgley Park, or Tigers as they like to be named these days and will be hoping to emulate ‘The Thirds’ success at that particular venue last Saturday.
The home side who currently occupy third place in the league table will be looking to keep in touch with the two runaway leaders of National 2 North, Hull Ionians and last weeks opponents at Lightfoot Green, Ampthill who with a full strength squad available looked every part a National 1 outfit.
It’s very early in the season to be making any predictions, but with one of the pre-season favourites Stourbridge not looking like they’ll be making a bid for promotion after three consecutive defeats, it looks very much like a two horse race unless our opponents this week can make up ground on the current top two. The outcome of this weeks game down in Bedfordshire where Ampthill and Hull Ionians face up will be very interesting indeed. My money’s on the home side to prevail.
The rest of the table is another thing entirely. Stockport currently sit at its foot, but as we saw on our last venture away from Lightfoot Green they are currently without a number of key players and mustn’t be underestimated. Birmingham Solihull and Broadstreet who occupy the next two places have both suffered a number of narrow defeats, Sedgley just managing to scrape a win last week at Portway being just one example. A view on how tight the league stands at present can be measured by the fact that Caldy & Hoppers who sit joint fifth are just a bonus point win clear of Birmingham Solihull who occupy the highest of the relegation places.
Back to this coming Saturday and Head Coach Garth Dew will know all about the club who reside in the Whitefield area of North Manchester having spent a large portion of his playing career with them and will be determined his charges have given a good account of themselves come Saturday evening.
Encounters with our hosts from Greater Manchester commenced just about ten years after our move from Lea to Fulwood with an away game and victory by twelve points to six. Sedgley had stepped into a vacant Easter Saturday fixture date on the 2nd of April 1983 after Blackburn had pulled out and the event started a short run of fixtures for just three years all of which were won by Hoppers.
The next time the two clubs met was in the first ever League fixture which was played at Park Lane back in 1997 when Hoppers continued their winning ways with a narrow twenty points to sixteen victory. Hoppers went on to complete the double that season and it wasn’t until we played a Lancashire Cup tie at Lightfoot Green during the 2000/2001 season that ‘Park achieved a victory over Preston Grasshoppers something that was repeated in league form at the double during the following season when Hoppers were relegated from National 1. Sedgley Park however remained at Level 3 and apart from a number of Lancashire Cup ties and a pre-season fixture during 2011, the two teams hadn’t met in league action until last season. The playing record between Hoppers and Sedgley Park shows the current standing to be in Preston Grasshoppers favour.
The three Club games back in the 1980’s were all won by Hoppers and league wins stand in favour of Preston by five to three whilst Lancashire Cup clashes are also in Hoppers favour by four to three. The pre-season game played at Lightfoot Green back in 2011 turned out to be a comprehensive victory for the visitors. So there have been seventeen games in all between the two clubs, Hoppers winning twelve to Sedgley Park’s seven.
Photograph courtesy of Mike Craig
