Back to normality for Workington Town

After the excitement of a day out in Blackpool last week, we were back to our regular set of travellers for the trip to Swinton.

Swinton currently play at Park Lane, Whitefield, which is the home of Sedgley Park RUFC.

A little history - the club was formed in 1866, joining the Rugby Football Union in 1871 under the name of Swinton and Pendlebury.

In 1929 they moved to a new stadium known as Station Road where they played until 1992 when financial difficulties necessitated a move to Gigg Lane, Bury, the home of Bury FC.

In 2002, they played home matches at Moor Lane in Kersal and also at Leigh and Chorley before moving to Sedgley Park in 2003.

In the Lions’ last season at Station Road they were drawing crowds of 3,000 but the sudden move caused the loss of many supporters.

The good news is that there are plans being developed to return to a new stadium at Swinton and Pendlebury, close to the Station Road Ground.

Sunday was a beautiful sunny day, and even though I don’t recall us beating Swinton at this venue, there was an air of optimism that we might get something.

In recent years these games have been tough encounters with a lot of points scored and another close encounter was on the cards, which was reflected in our score predictions competition.

Predictions turned out to be correct, with a very tough and entertaining game which could have gone either way right to the end with both teams deserving to get something out of it, so a draw was probably a fair result.

There were good performances from a number of Town players with Jarrad Stack and Jack Pedley to the fore and possibly without the gamestar Phil Joseph for Swinton we would have won.

A much better performance over the full 80 minutes than previously and though we’re outside the top seven it leaves us with a real chance of the play-offs.