Memories of the first ever game of rugby in Pocklington will be rekindled this weekend as part of the rugby union club's 125th anniversary celebrations.

A team from Pocklington School will take on ten men from the town in Victorian kit and rules in a re-enactment of the first game played in the town.

Welsh clergyman Walter Walters, a former captain of the oldest team in Wales at Lampeter College, arrived in Pocklington to teach and ended up arranging a match between a Pocklington Grammar School XV and a team of ten from 'Pocklington Town & District'.

The result was "decided in the favour of the school by one goal (disputed) and three tries, to one goal (disputed) and one try" as in 1879 there were no referees, and captains had to agree or disagree on decisions. A try, meanwhile, had no value of its own with all goals worth the same, but came into play if the number of goals was equal.

That first game kicked off 125 years of continuous rugby in the town.

The special commemorative match will kick off at 2pm on Sunday following the usual junior programme and a Cambridge University Women tour match against Cantabrian Barbarians - a Cambridge old girls' side - at 12.30pm.

The University side have made annual trips to the club for the last ten years.

The team, now sponsored by Pocklington vice-president and MEP Godfrey Bloom's company, TBO, will take on Doncaster Ladies at Percy Road at 12.30 on Saturday as a curtain-raiser to the men's first team Yorkshire Two league encounter against Heath, which kicks off at 2.15.

A free jazz night starring Blind Lemon's Hot Five will start at 6pm.

Updated: 11:19 Friday, December 03, 2004