We are delighted to announce that we are sponsoring Birstall Victoria ARLFC under 12’s team this season. As part of this sponsorship we have also provided the team with a new kit, which we were on hand to see presented to them before the local derby match versus Dewsbury Moor.

It’s always a feisty occasion when these two teams met, so we saw it as the perfect opportunity to give the team a little boost before the game by providing them with the new strip. Lee Ashton, the head coach for the team had this to say in regards to the new kit, before the match;

‘Credit to Nexus and credit to Matt, you’ve given us the money and we’ve got a whole new range, we’ve got all new leisure wear coming, a brand new kit, a brand new supplier and it looks awesome, as you’ll see tonight’.

Our Operations Director Mathew Barnes is close to the team, as his son Ethan plays for them, so we saw it as a perfect opportunity to be involved with the local community and to help out as much as we could.

Lee also arranged for the ex rugby league player Wayne Godwin AKA ‘Wagga’ to come down from Rugby AM to present the team with the kit before the match, which was a nice surprise for the lads.

‘He’s like a bouncy ball, he’s ace, I’m excited and the kids are excited. We’re going through a bit of a tough time at the minute with results not matching the effort and performance going in. But hopefully with Wagga coming down tonight, he can give them a bit of energy, a bit of a boost and he can hopefully get us over the line tonight in a local derby’.

Rugby AM is a TV show broadcast every week on Freesports and is the only Rugby League magazine tv show to go out every week on national TV. So you can imagine the excitement when the team found out that Wagga would be coming down for the match.

Wayne presents Wagga’s Little League on Rugby AM, which is a feature where he visits rugby league youth teams across the country, interviews the coaches and the team and watches their game that week. It’s a fantastic idea and one that hopefully showcases some of the future stars of Rugby League.

Now to the game itself and what a first half! As Lee said, Birstall had been struglling for results in the past few games and now they were up against their fierce rivals, who were in form themselves and had recently acquired one of Birstall’s players too, to add even more spice to the game.

But in the first half Birstall were more than matching Dewsbury in everything they did. They were tackling hard and running hard and the majority of the half was played at the Dewsbury end. Birstall just couldn’t get it over the line and at half time, the score remained 0-0.

However early in the second half, Dewsbury scored a try and unfortunately Birstall’s heads dropped, as they often do when you are out of form. This was a real shame as they had been playing so well! Unfortunately Dewsbury went on to score the conversion and two more tries in the second half.

However after good work from the whole team to get the ball forward, Ethan ran the ball over the line to get a try back for Birstall before the final whistle. It was a tough defeat to take after a great performance in the first half but if Birstall continue to play like that, they’l have no problems in winning more games than they’ll lose this season.