well guys its that time again that we all cant wait for start of the season and as we had done predictions for the last few seasons i thought id get us off again

Blackburn v Bolton
Westhoughton V Saints Wild Boar
Chorley v Newton
Waterhead v Eccleston
Bury v Hindley
Wigan Bulldogs v Rochdale Cobras

Winners in Bold

Here's Mine.

Blackburn v Bolton
Westhoughton V Saints Wild Boar
Chorley v Newton
Waterhead v Eccleston
Bury v Hindley (Come on the Broncos

)
Wigan Bulldogs v Rochdale Cobras

With Ayres Rock...definately fancy Bolton over Blackburn


Only one i'd question is Waterhead, year on year you don't know what they will turn out...

well good luck bury i hope you beat hindley because we've been told that there one of the fancied teams for this division and i agree with you over waterhead a few seasons ago we played them in div 3 and they were a strong team but have dropped to div 5 for some reason

To be honest I can see Hindley winning the league this year with Rochdale cobras pushing them all the way. Waterhead you dont know what you are getting but i would fancy them to field a strong team after last season with no doubt the next batch of their youth coming through so cant really judge them yet.

How have you guys been doing in pre-season and training? i would think you will be up there in the mix.


Out of the others i can see Bolton doing alright as they are an established team and also Newton. along with these 2, i think the rest will be an interesting mix because even the new teams like westhoughton and chorley they will do alright against teams like eccleston, wigan bulldogs, blackburn and us at bury and we all are more than capable of beating each other

i reckon this will be a really good close season and very even throughout with only Waterhead having the option of calling upon players from there other 2 teams

really looking forward to it.

In fact here's out i see the league finishing from a non-biased point of view

Hindley
Rochdale Cobras
St Helens Wild Boars
Bolton
Waterhead
Newton
Wigan Bulldogs
Bury
Chorley
Blackburn
Eccleston
Westhoughton

any guesses from anyone else.

What makes you think that teams ain't strengthened in the off season?

Not sure what some of the other teams are like in the league but I have a feeling a few teams will suprise you this year

i stand to be proven wrong

i wont be too surprised if some do do better and others will not be as good as predicted. Aint that like any competition though?

as i said though, i think it's going to be really close throughout. Hindley though are far to strong if last year is anything to go off. They could easily hold there own in divisions above this. Rochdale finished strongly last year and i am guessing that the demise of Milnrow will have only bolstered there squad.

I'm not sure who you play for but guessing Newton and i think you guys should have a decent season an all.

i'm guessing teams will have strengthened, i know we have at Bury.

we have strengthened really well and for the first time in a while we had 25 lads battling for 17 shirts when we named the squad so things are sharper and harder but then we will have to see how things pan out starting tommorow. im glad you tipped westhoughton to finish bottom because we start against them so hopefully we can get 2 points to start the season off.

heard your pitch isnt playable for tomorrow and the game is off.

Hindley have a much stronger team this year across the park with 30 lads playing, plus im back from my shoulder op so hopefuly we can get that top spot this time

we had you guys in the cup last year but you couldnt raise a team, good to see you've strenghtend your squad, I dont like seeing clubs go to the wall.

We played Westhoughton a couple of months and they do have a half decent team. I think there a bit light on numbers and experience which i think will go against them. On the other side of the coin though and they could easily finish mid table if they have strengthened as Saint me said. I really do think it will be a really close league though which has to be good for us all in div 5.

yeah, our pitch doesn't drain at all and really holds surface watch so with the rain we've had, it's not surprising.

i got a text before saying that we were trying to re-arrange it to your place but i dont know anything more than that.

lets hope we do manage to find a new pitch soon.

i wouldnt hold much hope of it being on at our place mate been raining a fair bit in wigan but u never know, its good to see a bit of common sense and getting the fixtures reversed if poss.

yeah be good if the game could still be played but not sure what it's been like up there and how your pitch holds up.

i wouldn't be playing anyway so in a way it's 1 more game i will be able to play if it doesn't take place

As I'm sure you've all heard by now, game off. Both pitches unplayable - but then it has been raining for 40 days and 40 nights. Right ed off, been looking forward to this for weeks.






Does that mean you're gonna stop running away to India? I want to see more of those length-of-the-field breaks you make (only to fall over 3 yards out!).

Haha, yeah my work in India is done. Just the small matter of a trip to the Falkland Islands before the year is out and hopefully will stop sending me working in London so I can actually make training



If I had been greedy and gone for the try I would never of slipped

looks like already this league's throwing up results



what happened today?

The Westhoughton team that played you in the friendlies isn't quite the
same team that's starting the league, We have gained 4 or 5 new players.
But you can carry on treating us as underdogs as it's more fun when you
turn established teams over, Or you can try tacking our heads off in every
tackle and get more and more frustrated because we cant be intimidated
and then blame the ref

good on you for the result today. obviously it's hard to know what each team has been upto isn't it in the off season and i will keep saying it, i'm only saying what i am based on previous experience and on last years. Teams will have got better / worse.

Cheers mate, It was what you might call a "Physical game" but we sort of knew what to expect from teams that had played Saints previously, Just took advantage of penalty count and sin bins. Decent set of lads after the game though. Any other results from today?

No worries. i have played wild boars a few years back and not saying there the same team now but in the "friendly" match we had, it got abandoned so i have pre-conceived ideas of what it's going to be like.

only 3 games made it from div 5 by the looks of it:

Waterhead 24 - 12 Eccleston Lions
Westhoughton Lions 33 - 30 St Helens Wild Boar
Wigan Bulldogs 06 - 54 Rochdale Cobras

Our game was a good one that could have gone either way, Waterhead just took their chances better than we did. I also believe that they had a couple of their first team playing also which makes the result a stronger one in our favour.

Hopefully we can kick on from here and pick up a few vistories this year

ill tell you what happened we played very poor the lads were gutted we was down to 11 men and every time we tried to get a roll on one of their players decided to play injury only to be ok 30 seconds l8r whn set. they did have some good players but the ref said afterwards if we hadpayed rugby we would have scored 60. all they have is 2 lads and play 1 up rugby all day didnt see 1 move not even an x . we had 5 cmpleted sets an scored 30 points we playyed very poor and im not looking forward to training tues expect a different side on saturday

about 200 texts, and 19 phone calls between 2.30 Fri (when Bury council called me saying our pitch was shut), and 10.15 on Saturday (when Dave rung me from Hindley). We'd swtiched the game and rearranged everything to try and make sure the game got played...i was gutted to say the least!