It is a busy weekend for all our teams this weekend : 1st XV travel to West Yorkshire to face Bradford & Bingley RUFC; at Kelleythorpe we have the 2nds v Yarnbury (3rds v Hull Uni is cancelled) ; the 4th team head to Hullensians to play their 3rd XV. On Sunday, after the youngsters, our women host Hornsea Women.
Driffield 1st XV have a tough trip this week as Bradford are currently in 5th place in the league on 56 points, 1 place and 4 points above us. Bradford have had a mixed season : I would imagine they started the season as favourites for many. However, they lost their first 4 games before beating West Leeds at the end of September. The week after they lost at York 34-20. A 7-week winning run then followed, including their win at Kelleythorpe 20 – 25. This was followed by 4 losses on the bounce. In their last 3 games they lost at West Leeds 26-24, beat York at Bradford 32-10 and drew at Pocklington 29 each.
As mentioned above, Bradford took the win at Kelleythorpe back in October. As usual, it was a tough match with Bradford just edging it. Last season we did the double over the Bees, winning 28-7 at Kelleythorpe on the opening weekend and 14-33 on the final weekend. The season before we both won our home games.
Our victory over Malton last week will hopefully give us a boost up the league. The first 20 minutes it looked like it was going to be the usual tight affair, but then we got playing and the rest is history. Full Match Report can be read here: https://driffieldrufc.com/2019/02/10/driffield-38-0-malton-norton-saturday-9-february/. The win against Malton was much needed, following 4 straight losses. It was good to see some of the many injured players returning too.
The league is still pretty close at this point. Scarborough and Morpeth still look like finishing in the top 2 : in what order, who knows. We welcome Scarborough to Kelleythorpe in 2 weeks time. YMCA sit in 3rd, kind of in no man’s land, 7 points off 2nd, 8 ahead of 4th. Morley and the Bees are 4th and 5th, separated by 2 points (Morley have a game in hand). We and Percy Park sit 6th and 7th, separated by just 1 point. Then 8th tp 13th are split by 14 points : Malton, Pock, York, Cleck, Brid and West Leeds. Consett, despite their two wins stay bottom. Full table here : https://www.englandrugby.com/fixtures-and-results/competitions/northern-division/2018-2019/group/26457#/table
West Leeds are looking interesting at present, winning 3 out of their last 5 – they might just be making a fight of staying up. Still no one safe from Morley down.
Driffield 1st XV v Bradford & Bingley 1st XV, Sat 16th Feb, 2019. KO 2.15.
- Blenkinsop
- Brumfield
- Robson
- Dinsdale
- Warcup
- Morris
- Turner
- Brankley
- Gray
- Watts
- Robinson
- Soanes
- Stephenson
- Dinsdale
- Jackson
- Nettleton
- Kelly
- Zavatti.
Good Luck to all.