This Saturday we welcome Bishop Stortford to Volac Park for a double header. The 3rd XV do not have a fixture.
To celebrate we have a Beer festival with the bars open from 11:30.
Bishop Stortford are of course our nearest neighbours from just down the road in Hertfordshire. In Saxon times the land that is now Hertfordshire was split between Mercia and Essex. Essex fell to the Vikings leaving Hertfordshire as border lands. As the Saxon reconquered, Edward the Elder- son of Alfred the Great founded a burgh - a fortified town -at Hertford to protect London from the threat of attack from the vikings at Cambridge. This would become the new county town and led to further markets including Stortford. After the Norman Invasion it was awarded to William the Norman, Bishop of London - hence Bishop's Stortford.
Their visit of marks the start of the second half of the season. We have now played each team once and start the return fixtures, which are played in the same order, except "the first one now will later be last" to quote Bob Dylan. Or more prosaically we end the season with our trip to Reading to play Rams.
While the first half of the season has not gone as well as we wanted, we are thirteen points above the relegation zone and twenty off the lead. Of course that assumes no Championship side goes broke and the league is not restructured. We have already scored 35 points and so far no side has been relegated on more than 62 points - but given how close the league is who knows what will happen this season.
There are some things that we do not want to change. We won both the encounters down at Silverleys, despite both Ayrton bothers scoring tries against us. We will be looking for a repeat in Cambridge and coming away with five points.
Despite that defeat, this season Bishop Stortford have won one more game than we have with one draw to our tow. They have picked up three more bonus points. So they are five points above us in the table. Hopefully, after this match we will be level.
