SIMON SMITH: There's no easy games at this level

One thing is becoming apparent though - there’s going to be no easy games in North One East this season.

Someone summed it up nicely for me after the game on Saturday that it’s like playing top-four Yorkshire One sides every week, and that is true.

Cleckheaton were a big, imposing side and they were very direct in their approach to the game.

We had to tackle very well and defended well for sustained periods on a couple of occasions in the contest.

They gave the man of the match honours to Euan Govier on Saturday in the clubhouse, who I thought had a really good game.

Aaron Wilson and Tom Hicks had very good games too, and I was impressed with Billy Parker too.

Billy tackled and carried the ball superbly throughout the game.

Our new French prop Alexis Core came on and got some more minutes under his belt and continues to get into the feel of things at the club and how rugby is played here.

To look back at the first three games, we’ve achieved the points target I set the guys of two wins from the first three games.

We really didn’t do ourselves justice at Bridlington last week, despite the conditions not being in our favour.

We have some very tough games coming up, so if we can stick with it and pick up points here and there and occupy a mid-table place after our next three games, I’d be very happy with that.

We’ll have had four away games and only two at home from our first six outings, so if we can be positioned in mid-table that would be good for us.

We got to a very strong Huddersfield YMCA side on Saturday, and we’ll look to exploit the space on their big playing surface, hopefully the overhead conditions are in our favour too.

That is followed by more tough games against Morpeth and West Leeds.