Mr Maccle and his field

It can come as a surprise how many places in England are named after people. People lost in the mists of time in most cases, but people all the same. Near my childhood home (in a village named after the fifteenth century owner of the land), one Eadhelm, in Saxon times, built a bridge. His bridge gave its name to the settlement of Edenbridge that grew up around it, and, by backwards naming, to the River Eden, a tributary of the Medway. Meanwhile, in Cheshire, Knut (or Canute) found no such structure when he wanted to cross the River Lily, and therefore needed to find a ford to wade across. It's grim up north.

A few miles away at around the same time, one Maccle owned a field, probably a more substantial piece of land than would attract the designation today. On this grew the town of Macclesfield, where Cheshire were to play Lancashire in the final group game for the Rugby Union County Championship for the Bill Beaumont Cup.

Lancashire's Nicholas Royle gets free from a tackle

As part of my journey, I used Cross Country trains, who have introduced a new category to their seat reservation system, "Available, but may be reserved later". It is the less convenient side of their policy to allow reservations up to 10 minutes before your train: if you do not have one, you need to check at every stop whether your seat has been reserved under you.

Wikipedia tells us a Sport England survey in 2006 found Macclesfield had the third highest level of participation in sport and fitness activity in England. It seemed to show, with my unscientific observations disclosing a leaner population than many comparable towns. I should have entered into the spirit and walked the mile and a half to Macclesfield RUFC's ground on the edge of the town, but when the Arriva North West Day Rover that got me to the station in Liverpool worked here as well, it seemed rude not to take the bus.

The weather was changeable, so I needed to keep putting the cover on the camera and taking it off again. I  could have just left it on, but I find using it so inconvenient that I prefer to take it off when I do not need it. County games do not occupy the place in the calendar that they once did, but there is still a decent turn out from the professional photographers, ready to give you lens envy.

It is the thought of carrying kit like that around (as well as giving me something to write about) that keeps me working with consumer kit: a lens like that is as heavy as it looks, and the size of the bag to carry it would probably put an end to those days out with the Cables Train Crew.

As in football, there are positions in rugby that tend to attract the lens more than others. One is the scrum half, who is often on hand when the players are reasonably stationary, such as putting the ball in the scrum (he is holding the ball by the ends here, presumably to roll it in - when I was at school, admittedly 25 years ago, we were taught to put it in lengthways)...

Thomas Webb feeds the ball in

... passing it to the backs when it comes out again (they do not do those dive passes I remember from the seventies any more)...

... and getting the ball from the ruck or maul.

Replacement scrum half James Smith

They sometimes get to run with it as well.

Cheshire scrum half Joe Murray

This was a much more running game than that against Yorkshire, with even a few shots of players chasing the loose ball, with which I am more familiar in football. Numbers on the front of shirts would be just as useful too.

Going in to the game, Cheshire needed to win, and do so by 13 points or score 4 tries to win the Division and go to the Final. With the final score of 20-13 to the home side, they had not done enough, so Lancashire made another journey to Twickenham, where they regained the Bill Beaumont Cup, defeating Cornwall, returning to the top tier of the competition after some years' absence, 35-26.

Across the Pennines, Yorkshire beat Durham, retaining their Division 1 place. I think it is their turn to host next year, so I am hoping for a picturesque location - I mean Huddersfield is all very convenient, but ...

The rest of the pictures from the game can be seen here.