WELL, it’s finally arrived – an opportunity, at the third attempt, to record our first league win of the season.
At the time of writing, Stu had still to scale down his 21-man squad to the 17 to face West Wales Raiders, but with no Ryan Wright, Brad Jinks or Sean Slater in the 21 it looks a sure bet that Billy Yarrow and/or Tom Forber will get an early chance to show what they are made of in the key dummy-half role.
We might even have three debutants in action if Logan Astley gets his first run at half-back.
Plenty of interesting asides to this match then and that’s before we touch on Martyn Ridyard’s 1,000 career goals or Jordan Andrade’s wedding last Saturday that caused the big, powerful prop to miss the Hunslet game.
He’s back in the 21 today and everyone at the club — senior management, coaching staff, his fellow players and supporters, will wish the happy couple congratulations, good health and all the best in their futures together.
As for Riddy’s 1,000 goals, heartiest congrats are in order once again. That’s no mean achievement by any standards and although a large slice of his two-pointers were recorded for Leigh, we’ve seen enough already in his short time here to know that his goals alone will be very valuable to us as the season unfolds.
He doesn’t figure in Betfred League One’s first scoring charts of the new season, but he soon will, you can be sure of that.
For the record — and ONLY for the record — we’ve won each of our four previous games against the Raiders with an aggregate points tally of 309 for and 20 against.
To date this season, they’ve been beaten in cup and league by Swinton Lions and also by Rochdale Hornets down in Llanelli.
