Forward selection poser for Fylde

4:26pm Thursday 21st February 2008

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Fylde travel to St Helens to take on West Park on Saturda for what should be a hard fought tussle.

West Park are in eleventh place National Three (North) four places below Fylde, who will be looking to push towards a top four place following their excellent performance against Leicester Lions last Saturday.

Fylde didn't pick up any significant injuries in the exciting drawn game against Leicester and will have some selection headaches among the forwards.

With Sam Simpson coming through the Wanderers match successfully at the weekend, they have five excellent props in selection contention - Darren Clark, Adam Lewis, Matt Filipo, Andrew Irving and Simpson.

And there will be a temptation to leave skipper Roger Banks at number eight after his outstanding game there last Saturday.

It's likely that centre Alex Hurst's ankle injury will again rule out the youngster.

Fylde are likely to come up against two of their former players - aggressive centre Dave Cunliffe, who had a successful season at the Woodlands in 2006/7 and flanker Paul Bamber who was with Fylde in the 2003-4 period.

Park's star turn is former Waterloo, Harlequins, England A and England Counties star Rob Hitchmough at fly-half.

He has scored numerous tries against Fylde over the years, the latest of which was at the Woodlands in October in the 13-all draw between the clubs.

Other dangerous backs include winger or fullback Mark Turner and very experienced centre Stephen Briars who has missed recent games through injury.

The highly versatile Andrew Soutar is a reliable goal kicker and has notched 118 points this season at a 62 per cent success rate, very similar to Fylde's John Armstrong who has 123 at the same rate.

The club has had disciplinary problems this season. Last Saturday in a 34-3 defeat against Tynedale they had two players sinbinned and a third, lock David Westhead, sent off.

But their determined spirit showed up as they were at one stage down to 13 players for eight minutes yet managed to only concede seven points to the runaway leaders.