Despite the availability of several returning players, who will surely come into the reckoning in the coming weeks and months, Wharfedale's selectors have kept faith in the team which beat high-flying Fylde before Christmas for their SSE National League One trip to Birmingham & Solihull on Saturday.

This means that Will Bell retains his fly-half position ahead of Tom Barrett, who joins a powerful bench, and flanker James Holland, not 21 until next month, again starts ahead of England Sevens player Aaron Myers.

Luke Gray, who was on the bench for the Fylde match, gets game-time with the Foresters at Ilkley, where he will play behind a three-quarter line which includes James Tincknell.

Wharfedale, on a five-match winning sequence, would have preferred not to have had a break over Christmas, while bottom club Birmingham & Solihull, after six successive defeats, will feel exactly the opposite.

The minds will therefore be firmly fixed on Saturday’s test, and the Greens will not be allowed to forget their own abject display in September, when their indiscipline cost them a one-point home defeat at the hands of the Midlanders.

Wharfedale (at Birmingham & Solihull): D Hart; S Jordan, A Hodgson, T Davidson, S Horsfall; W Bell, P Woodhead; T McGee, B Sowrey, N Dickinson, R Brown, J Quinn, J Holland, R Baldwin, D Solomi. Replacements: J Altham, S Graham, R Rhodes, A Myers, T Barrett.