Fears grow of fixture pile-up
Dec 9 2010 by Mark Smith, The Journal
MORPETH Rugby Club once again fell victim to the weather, as snow and freezing temperatures ended any hopes of getting their game on.
The Mitford Road outfit were due in Yorkshire to face Old Brodleians in North One East, but once again the conditions won the day as the match was put on ice until February 26.
First-team captain Tom Wilkinson said: “There are three spare weekends factored into the league season to deal with events just like this.
“Two of those weekends have now been filled, however, with our last couple of matches being called off.
“What we hope to avoid is the farcical situation we had with the prolonged bad weather last winter, where we used the three spare weekends up very quickly and still had a load of games left to play.
“In the end we had to extend the league season by a fortnight to get them all played, but nobody wants a repeat of that.”
Revealing the club’s plan to cope with the conditions, Wilkinson added: “We’ve been keeping our conditioning sessions on despite the weather, thanks to training indoors at the Pegasus Equestrian centre.
“We found that during the similar period last season when games were getting called off, our competitors were simply cancelling most of their training sessions.
“We kept on with it, though, and in the end the extra fitness helped us to avoid relegation.”
Morpeth are currently fifth-bottom of the 14-team league, but they will be aiming to improve on that on Saturday when they play host to Percy Park.
Task number one remains getting the Mitford Road pitch playable for the North One East encounter, but then they must face up to a Percy Park side flying high at second in the league.
The North Shields-based outfit have lost only one of their 11 league outings to date, and will provide formidable opposition.
They have scored 325 points in league action, the most in the entire division, and boast the highest points difference in the table at plus 159.
Like Morpeth, Ashington RFC also had a blank weekend due to the snow, as the visit of Gateshead was postponed.
The league leaders were due in Northumberland having won all of their 11 matches this term, but once again the weather was the winner and the teams must wait until February 26 for the rescheduled Durham and Northumberland One clash.
This weekend sees Ashington due to visit Ponteland, who lie third-bottom of the league after winning just two of their 11 of their games so far.
