Rugby League
Championship
Sunday 26th July 2026
Kick Off 15.00
Sheffield Eagles 56 Rochdale Hornets 6, attendance 307
@ Sheffield F.C.
MEPS International Home of Football Stadium
(The Coach & Horses Ground)
Sheffield Road
Dronfield
S18 2GD
£20 Admission
No Programme.
I’d only stayed around half an hours drive from here last night, so an easy drive into the Derbyshire town of Dronfield, where Sheffield Eagles now play their home games. I’d been here for football back in 2001 (Sheffield 3 Hallam 3 in Northern Counties East League Premier Division), but don’t really remember anything about the stadium, although it will have been improved considerably since then. I certainly don’t remember having had any problems with parking, but it is absolutely dreadful now. There’s no street parking options without a hell of a hike, so you’re basically forced to pay a fiver to use the car park, which to be fair, was well organised. You enter the ground in one corner, with changing rooms/toilets/tea bar to your left and beyond that a seated stand. The far side, which is overlooked by the car park, has the dugouts and spectator access goes round to them. The other touchline has an area of covered standing,with another seated stand beyond this. The far end is flat standing and there’s an old fashioned scoreboard in the corner. It was laughable that the official attendance was announced as 547…..my headcount was 240 fewer than that!
The match was 7th versus 13th in the league table and despite turning into a stroll, it was very even for the first twenty minutes or so, but a nineteen minute try under the posts for Eagles soon changed that. By halftime they’d stretched their lead to 18-0 and were now well on top. Twelve more points were added in the first ten minutes of the second half and just before the hour mark Hornets finally got a try and added the conversion to make it 30-6. Sadly, that was it as far as any comeback was concerned. Eagles ran in four more tries, bringing up the half century of points with six minutes left and rounded off the scoring in the last minute, running the length of the pitch, switching from right to left and scoring in the corner.
Away from the ground easily and a relatively smooth drive home, as far as a Sunday evening heading back towards London goes. I had a fifteen minute delay near Luton and the usual crawl on the M25 from J16-J12 and home just after eight.
