THIS Sunday (November 21), Leigh East plays host to an international Rugby League festival where the masters sides of England, Ireland, Wales, and Canada will come together to play and celebrate the sport.

Masters is a rugby league variant for over 35s and is one of the growth areas of the sport with six new teams springing up around the UK since the Covid pandemic.

Gaz Hopkins, Leigh East Masters manager, and coach, has helped to organise the festival and takes up the story: “The masters' management group approached me as Leigh East representative and asked if we could host with our facility being all weather.

"It's not something that I or the club could turn down. It's a great honour to host masters, especially with the nations that are coming. It's a big event for the club.

“I've been asked to be the assistant coach this year of England and myself and my wife have done a lot of organising with the masters team, working on the timings of the games, I've sorted out mascots, I've got Warren Turley's physio students giving rubdowns before the games, there's a lot of things in the background that have been sorted out."

There will be Leigh East Masters helping out on the day too with the gate and sorting the car park.

He continued: “The Leigh East Under 15s will play a curtain-raiser. An old player and friend of the club, David Blinkhorn is bringing his Dalton team down. That starts at 11.15am.”

Each masters game will be 20 minutes long, played across two pitches at Ledgard Avenue with these set to get underway from 1pm.