THE LHF Healthplan National League campaign got underway over the Easter weekend and, where the Knights are concerned, we would swap all our wins this season for success in the league.

This considered, I felt slightly frustrated by the fact our opening league game was having to be played by pretty fatigued players.

I am a big believer in 'you get what you are given' but you would have to question the effect a good Challenge Cup run and qualification in the Arriva Trains Cup took out of us.

Take into account a couple of our players, say Darren Callaghan or Craig Forsyth. These players have just completed five games in 16 days. Then on top of this there are the training sessions (albeit scaled down in accordance with our workload), and added to this is the fact that both guys work as builders during the day.

I can tell you the pay these guys receive does not reflect the work they put in and the pain they go through.

They do not have the luxury of the recovery time or rehab that full-time players are afforded.

As you can guess, much of a life outside of rugby can be hard to achieve and wives and girlfriends have plenty to suffer (or maybe they prefer it that way).

Maybe we have been victims of our own success in the cups, but the point I'm making is that I'm not too sure that the Easter tradition of playing two games in a weekend is one that needs to be upheld, especially when the latter game is the opening match of our flagship competition played in the holiday period.

Two fatigued teams on the opening game of the campaign?

All this leads me to congratulate our players on winning every game since our exit from the Challenge Cup.

I tip my hat to their commitment, and we will all look forward to getting back into the weekly routine. Well done to everyone at the club.

I believe that opening league game of ours, at home to Chorley, was a fair indication of just how tough National League Two will be this year.

They came up with some smart plays and no-one should read too much into their Arriva Trains Cup form - they won't be win-less in the league for long.

It was pleasing that after our hectic schedule, I felt we finished the much stronger team.

The remaining results probably went to form with the home teams (Sheffield excepted) and probably the expected favoured teams all getting the results.

Finally, a big thank you to Danny Seal. As you will have probably read by now, Danny's work commitments have got the better of him and he has reluctantly had to give the game away.

Danny was pretty choked about this but at 28 and with the long days he's having to put in, the impact on his life was getting too much.

We have left the door open to Danny should there be any change and we hope to see him come along to a few games.

I would like to go on record and thank him for his contribution both on the field and at training where everyone knows he gives his all.

He played a big part for us this year and we will all miss him.

Good luck Danny.

Updated: 10:08 Wednesday, April 14, 2004