A plethora of changes both positional and in personnel marked the 1st XV selection for the opening home game of the season versus Cheshire club Sandbach.
The visitor’s travelled on the back of an excellent high scoring home victory last week over Dudley K while Hinckley were still smarting from the loss at Peterborough Lions. Sandbach’s last visit to Leicester Road in April resulted in them going away with a 28-27 “smash and grab” and a somewhat baffling victory.

Perhaps as a reaction to both injuries and last week’s sub standard performance Jordan Goddard, Steve Morfill, Alex Salt, John Roux, Matt Loveday. Tom Hilyer and Isaac Norton (league debut) all started. Matt Fearn moved into the second row, Mitch Culpin reverted to full back while the bench was made up of Liam Warren, Rich Harris and Tom Morris.

The game was abandoned when the referee got a little too close to the action and twisted his knee. The physio patched him up and play resumed, however, after twenty four minutes he couldn’t continue and the game was halted. Sandbach will return to Leicester Road for the replay in early November.

For the record, it was a short game of very contrasting styles of play. The visitors consistently moved the ball away from contact in order to score two converted tries also adding a penalty. Meanwhile Sam Greasley scored a perfectly good try for the home side which was deemed to be held up over the line by the referee. The Hinckley scrummage then destroyed the opposition pack on a number of occasions resulting in an Alex Salt try routinely converted by Mark Lord. The score was 7-17 to the visitors at the conclusion of play with the prospect of a high scoring game in the offing.

Hinckley travel to unbeaten Scunthorpe next week in order to get their season up and running.