Because of the extremely wet weather which forced several cancellations this season, teams were initially given the opportunity to play postponed matches after the intended league completion date of 6th April.

Our original match against Oldfield in early March had to be postponed as Hicks Field was flooded again. Any blank weekends had already been filled by other rearranged matches, apart from Easter Saturday which had previously been designated as a “break weekend” so that players could spend the holiday period together with their families. As it happened, Easter Saturday once again saw waterlogged pitches which negated any faint possibility of playing then anyway.

At least we thought that the RFU dispensation would give us the opportunity to play our last outstanding league match against our city neighbours this Saturday 13th April. This local derby match would have brought our league season to a fitting end at Hicks Field with a decent sized crowd and probably reasonable bar takings.

However, under a different interpretation of the circumstances, we have been advised that the RFU have declared the match as a 0-0 draw with no match points being awarded to either side as it has no bearing on promotion or relegation.

This means that Avon have finished in 3rd place in Counties 2 Somerset behind league champions Taunton 2nds and runners-up Chew Valley 2nds. Our league playing record thus officially stands at Played 22. Won 16, Drew 1, Lost 5 with 729 points for and 381 against. Meanwhile Oldfield are left in 9th position in the table.

However, we are still in the Bath Combination Vase competition and next Tuesday 16th April we are playing away to Melksham in the quarter-finals, kick off at 7:45pm. This will be a tough match as Melksham are the unbeaten league champions of the Counties 2 Dorset & Wilts league. Coincidentally, the winners of that match will be away to Oldfield in the semi-finals before the final is played on the Rec on Wednesday. All supporters are most welcome to come along to cheer on the players on 16th at Melksham.