Skipton RU's 35-7 defeat at home to Leodiensians paled into insignificance with the news that Ian Scrivin's neck injury, serious though it was, had reacted well to surgery and that he is now on the way to recovery.

Although now entering a new year, Skipton's game followed an all too familiar pattern as a poor opening 15 minutes saw the visitors move into a 13-0 lead with a penalty to fly half Eddie and tries for Eagle and Barlow.

Given that Skipton centre Phil Lane was also sin-binned during the midst of this, it was no surprise that Skipton had their backs to the wall from the start.

That the referee was influential in the first try and was more than a little card sharp in the sin-binning was of little consolation.

Skipton, though, did get back into the game after a slow start and on 32 minutes following a good break from the influential Grant Litt, Lane burst through some weak tackling to score under the posts. Litt added the conversion to narrow the deficit to 13-7.

Unfortunately in the last three minutes of the half two things happened which had a great bearing on the result. Firstly, Skipton conceded a soft try by Leo's centre, Brown, which was converted by Eddie and then Steven Cullen made a great break from half-way but was stopped inches short.

The net result was a 20-7 deficit at half-time, when if things had gone the other way Skipton could have been leading by a point.

The second-half started with Skipton controlling the ball, but when all the backs got sucked in to the various attacking phases and the ball was lost the visitors had a massive overlap and Barlow scored his second try.

Skipton again tried their best to get into the game and Litt looked the most likely to add to their points total. Unfortunately, there are no points for being close and on the hour mark the visitors broke away from their line to score another unconverted try and extend their lead to 30-7.

Skipton's cause certainly wasn't helped by the loss of prop, Nathan Tiffen with a broken rib, although this gave former skipper Declan Hayes the chance to take the field, with Robbie King moving to prop.

Richard Wilsher entered the fray in place of Chris Wright and looks a fine athletic second row jumper, while John Firth came on for Phil Lane.

There was just time for the visitors to score their sixth try of the afternoon which was a complete fluke with the ball ricocheting about before falling kindly for their right winger.

In the process, Skipton's Sean Barraclough broke his forearm to leave the Reds further depleted. The last action of the game saw Skipton's best forward Scrivin take the ball into contact and in the process suffer a terrible injury and the referee made one of his few common sense decisions of the afternoon in calling an early halt to proceedings.

On the technical side, Skipton will have been disappointed with their set-piece play, with the scrummaging being weak and the lineout woeful.

With the stern test of an in-form North Ribblesdale to be faced this weekend, it will be important to strengthen those areas.

A new year, a similar result, and unfortunately a continuation of the horrendous injury problems, although thankfully by Monday the news on that front was very much more positive.