Following the restructuring of the Mens leagues nationally, the First XV find themselves back into North One East, along with fellow Cumbrian sides Aspatria and Keswick, and Penrith.

It will be a return to the North East in which we last played competitive league rugby in season 2010-11 before being level transferred to North 1 West for season 2011-12. We say goodbye to the sides in the North West where we made a lot of friends in the last 10 or so years, and look forward to renewing old acquaintances both within County and in the North East.

Our fellow competitors are Consett, Durham City, Middlesborough, Morpeth,Northern, Percy Park, South Shields Westoe, and Stockton.
So it'll be goodbye M6/M56/M58/M60/M61 and hello A69/A68/A1/A66/A19
Fixtures can be found on the England Competitions website and are also currently in our Website Calendar and will soon be in the First XV page fixture list.
We open the league campaign with an away fixture against South Shields Westoe on the 3rd September and our first home game is against Morpeth the following weekend on the 10th September, which will be our only home game in September.
In addition to this are likely to be County Cup fixtures which are rumoured to be starting on 27th August, although this is the bank holiday weekend, and a new national Cup competition, which will start in the middle of March and finish at the beginning of May. This is an optional competition and the club will decide whether to enter this in November.

Promotion and relegation for this league has just been confirmed with the top club promoted to Regional 1 NE or NW(level 5) and the bottom two clubs relegated to their County 1 league(level 7 - for us it would be Cumbria 1)

The Cougars find themselves in a small league again this year with only 5 teams, Blaydon Redkites, Darlington, Kendal Wasps and Novocastrians II, although sides will play each other three times to make up the fixture numbers. The fixtures are on the website with a space left for a possible sixth side to join the league. There will also be a cup competition introduced into the fixture schedule at a date yet to be determined.
It will be one up one down from this small league and the Cougars will surely be fired up to secure promotion into Championship North 1 this season, after just missing out last season.

As yet the fixtures for the Cumbria Shield league have not yet been determined so we wait to see what the Crusaders opposition is going to be.