A personal view of the sport By Roger Robson

Alan Jones fells Andrew Carlile

In an open space hidden between the bouncy castle and rows of little red tractors, the 2008 wrestling season got under way.

Hethersgill Vintage Club Rally accumulates on the edge of Carlisle Airport, and has been the host for our vintage sport for several years now.

Wrestlers ventured up from Kendal and gave a good account of themselves with William Atkinson proving to be the first winner of the new season.

In the main the wrestling results were remarkable for the way they fitted a type of hierarchy.

The youngsters had their fling, and then three main senior coaches entered the lists and firmly put the upstarts in their place.

In the all-weights semi-final, Carlisle's club coaches Alan Jones and Andrew Carlile met and the senior citizen Jones came out on top.

First he caught Carlile's foot with an outside-stroke that would not go away.

In the second bout Jones purloined a tricky little move patented recently by Carlile, twisting him back, round and down, against the usual anti-clockwise direction of wrestling movement.

In the other semi-final the Kendal senior coach, John Wilson, put the Under-18 winner James Oliver firmly in his place with two unstoppable buttocks.

Oliver, a Northumbrian who emigrated to the Scottish Borders, has probably never met a specialist in the art of buttocking before, and he stood off and gave too much room for Wilson's attack.

Carlile was in full control, twisting him back and down for the first fall Roger Robson

In the final Alan Jones showed how to keep the buttocker at bay by closing down on any attack and countering with a wrench-buttock off the right hip.

Wilson got free in the middle fall and won with the inevitable buttock, but Jones repeated his earlier success for the decider.

Joe Thompson of Alston, who trains at Carlisle in the winter, showed how dangerous he was, winning the Under-15's competition against Paul Murray in the final.

Then he was runner-up to James Oliver in the Under-18's, and finished in the final of the 12 and a half stones with his Carlisle coach, Andrew Carlile.

It could be that coaches keep some of the best moves to themselves, but certainly Carlile was in full control, twisting him back and down for the first fall and then rushing him forward onto his nose for the second.

The new season was well and truly launched.