Fylde welcome Chester to the Woodlands on Saturday (ko 15.00) for only the third time ever in league competition in a meeting of National Two North’s 5th and 8th placed teams. For two well established North West clubs, it’s surprising that since the establishment of leagues in the 1980s that the respective 1st XVs hadn’t met before the 2018-19 season.
Fylde notched a notable 5-16 win at Hare Lane in November 2018, the first defeat suffered there by the home team in a season and a half. The 2019-20 season saw Fylde notch a double over their North West neighbours, winning 42-17 at the Woodlands and a rather extraordinary 15-51 at Hare Lane in February 2020. Replicaing this success in the current campaign will be especially difficult and, indeed, the Fylde squad will need to be equally vigilant on Saturday if they hope to maintain their unbeaten home record so far this season.
In the period from 2002 until 2013, Chester were almost always competing in North One, level 5 in the RFU league structure. They had an outstanding campaign in 2012-13 when they finished as champions of National Three (North) and were promoted to National Two (North). They have performed very well since then, finishing 5th, 5th, 11th, 5th, 7th, 2nd and 6th in 2019-20.
This season has been rather uneven for our visitors, with six victories and seven defeats to date. Three successive defeats – at home to Hull Ionians (14-29) and Stourbridge (27-36) and at Hull RUFC (31-10) – were followed by five wins in the next six fixtures – home to Sheffield Tigers (35-24), Tynedale (32-31) and Huddersfield (54-24), and at Harrogate (11-14) and Luctonians (7-11). Three more successive losses, at Wharfedale (20-10) and Bournville (22-14), and at home to Sedgley Park (14-42), were followed last Saturday by a confidence boosting 33-21 victory over Blaydon.
Chester’s Head Coach is the very well known and respected former player Jan van Deventer and he has a very stable squad of players.
The power of the Chester pack has been amply demonstrated in recent seasons. The try scoring records of principal forwards such as no 8 Guy Ford and hooker Alick Croft speak for themselves.
Ford is one of the most experienced and influential players in the squad and has made going on for 200 appearances for the Club. He previously had spells with Bradford & Bingley and Otley and has extensive representative honours for Cheshire.
He is joined in the backrow by the powerful flanker George Baxter whilst in the engine room are powerful locks Jimmy Lloyd (formerly a stalwart at Sedgley Park) and skipper Harry Wilkinson. It remains to be seen if the frontrow of Tom Furnival, Scott Robson & Rhodrey Parry will pose as intractable opposition to their young Fylde opponents as the Hull behemoths last Saturday.
The well established backline stars high try scoring wing Harrison Vare, Welsh newcomer at fullback Gethin Long (formerly with Bethesda), experienced centre Sean Green and the very dangerous centre of fly-half Iwan Phillips, recently selected as N2N’s Player of the Week by the National League. The immensely powerful Cheshire centre Macc van Sertima, who has also had spells at Wharfedale and Caldy, started the season but hasn’t appeared in recent line-ups.
The halfbacks are usually playmaker and goal kicking fly-half Liam Reeve and former Sedgley Park (and Maltese international!) scrum-half Tom Holloway. Reeve is the 5th ranked N2N scorer with 93 points behind leader Greg Smith on 138.
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Fylde make two changes to their starting line-up with Matt Ashcroft at tighthead prop and Harlan Corrie at blindside wing forward. Among the replacement forwards, Sam Kyle-Clay has recovered from injury, Adam Lewis is available once more and Ben O’Ryan is recalled.
The back line is unchanged.
15 Tom Forster; 14 Henry Hadfield, 13 Tom Carleton, 12 Scott Rawlings, 11 Tom Grimes; 10 Greg Smith, 9 Matt Sturgess; 1 Joe Higgins, 2 Ben Gregory (c), 3 Matt Ashcroft, 4 Olli Parkinson, 5 Matt Garrod, 6 Harlan Corrie, 7 Charlie Partington,
8 Dave Fairbrother.
16 Sam Kyle-Clay, 17 Adam Lewis, 18 Ben O’Ryan, 19 Ben Turner, 20 Adam Lanigan.