So, with faces all aglow after last week’s fine start to the season, we find ourselves climbing aboard the charabanc from base camp BD16, to continue our ascent up Sunshine Mountain, with a road trip to Northallerton.

The details of this week’s playing squad will appear separately on your various Social Medias in due course, so I wont steal that thunder by revealing the runners and riders here.

However, I do know, from the gossip around the camp fire yesternight, that three of of our wiser men are not available this time out. On this basis, I can reveal that that Rob Woodhead, Benny Greaves and Roger Raper will not be featuring. My Spell checker keeps changing “Rob” to “Ron” so perhaps to comply with the software I should now think of Mr Woodhead as Ronnie. It has a Stonesy type ring to to it…

Also, there are rumours that it's about this time of year that the Three start gathering up their gifts and following a wandering star, but it's still a bit early in the Autumn for all that and the camels aren’t booked for a month or so yet, anyway.

Watching the game last week, I was asked if Roger Raper is like a fine wine maturing in an oak barrel or is Rog simply an oak barrel? It’s perhaps a subject for heated debate over a warm shandy after the game?

My memory of the game against Ripon keeps serving up one particular image of Rog unceremoniously dumping an opponent to the ground, which earned a roar of approval from the the “Special Corner” in front of the Club house. Before making this tackle young Master R set himself for the collision in a position last seen at the start of Silence of The Lambs where the bloke is struggling to lug a sofa into the back of a van. But blinking flip, it’s effective.

The youngest member of the wise old heads, Tom Dyson, is definitely still in the squad and we hope that his half back partnership with young Sammy Wild continues to thrive. With the forwards setting out a fairly solid stall in every phase of the game, and your new half backs varying the game, there was definitely a huge uplift in our confidence across the side, best epitomised by Dom Walker who had perhaps his best game in a few seasons and looked like he couldn’t go wrong when he put boot to ball.

Anyway, if you fancy making a trip out to watch the game, it kicks off at 3pm. Northallerton’s post code is DL6 2PZ and according to the Google machine that knows these things it should take you 1 hour and 24 minutes if you follow the A168. We’ll see you there.

So looking forward to the game, what do we know about Northallerton?

They began the season last week against Bridlington and received a thick ear to the tune of 58 points to 15.

As Jamie Martin has hung up his boots, I cant give you the inside track on how good or otherwise that Brid side is. Nevertheless, the result sees Northallerton begin the season at the bottom of the pile. They ended last season with 2 wins from their 22 fixtures, but were saved from any threat of relegation by the presence of Hemsworth who ended their campaign on minus 29 points. In terms of our jousts with Northallerton, they bookended our season and we began with a 22-17 win up at their spot and ended the season with a 38-27 victory at Wagon Lane.

I wasn’t overly diligent last season in writing our scorers on parchment at each game, but I can say that from the side that defeated Northallerton in April we have lost Mat Cochrane to retirement, Bryn Adamson to Baildon and possibly Ricky Palaccio to generally dropping to bits.

As I said earlier in this word salad, I wont reveal the selected squad at this point, but I dont believe we have anyone making a debut for us, although, I believe Ryan Melhuish and Austin Flaherty are both in line for their second appearances in Bees colours.

Upwards and Onwards.

And if you haven't yet paid a membership for 2025/26, please can you make your best endeavour to do so?

Next Home Game is against Halifax Saturday October 4th.