YORK RI RUFC began their Yorkshire Four Premier fixtures in good fashion with a 27-13 win over Leeds Medics & Dentists.

RI had qualified for the Premier section after finishing second in the south east section of division four, and they did their hopes of gaining promotion no harm by seeing off the team who had finished fourth in the north west section.

This coming Saturday, RI, now fourth in the Premier division, face third-placed Knaresborough, who had finished second in the north west division.

Nestle Rowntree, meanwhile, turned in a woefully inadequate performance to lose 33-7 in their Yorkshire Four Shield match at Thirsk.

A Morgan Cames try, converted by Dave Harder, was all the visitors had to show from the match, with their cause not helped by four yellow cards.

One was deserved, but the others were marginal and three of them, late on, opened the gateway for Thirsk’s young three-quarters to run amok and ensure the final winning margin was a large one.

The game started with Trees defending into the strong wind on the wide-open spaces of the racecourse pitch, but the forwards were up for the challenge and made inroads into the defence, only for a loose ball to be seized upon by Thirsk, who gleefully accepted the gift to go 7-0 up on the quarter-hour mark.

Trees tried hard to recover, but their entrenched habit of failing to find an opening for a try was to haunt them throughout.

The second half seemed to be all Trees and the backs gave them hope with a good converted try from full-back Cames three minutes in.

But time and again the Thirsk defence was easily able to hold them out as they struggled to find any consistency.

The hosts then scored a converted try against the run of play 25 minutes into the second period and the yellow cards gave them the chance to cross the line three more times late on.

Nestle will be hoping to bounce back away to Halifax this weekend.