While the competitive games take a break there is still festive rugby to be had over the Christmas and New Year period.

The bulk of the fun is on Boxing Day with fixtures at Vagabonds, Southern Nomads and Castletown.

The most significant of these is at the ground they call simply ’The Field of Dreams’.

Southern Nomads’ new Ballakilley ground will stage its first senior game on Boxing Day at 1pm when it hosts the annual Nomads Over-30s v Under-30s challenge.

At Ballafletcher on the same day, Vagabonds take on the Young Farmers in the Paul Cleland Memorial, while at Poulsom Park Castletown play their Chris Scott Memorial game where past players take on the current side.

The action at the latter gets under way at midday and will be followed by some mixed touch rugby.

A couple of days later, on Saturday, December 28, at Mooragh Park the legend that is Jim Nicholson will throw down the annual front-row challenge and field a team made up of props and hookers to take on a team hopefully made up of women and girls.

Obviously with it being mixed rugby, it will be in the tag format which means that everyone is welcome.

There is of course a serious side all of these games.

Each match will be looking to raise money for a chosen charity so expect a collection bucket and a raffle of some kind afterwards.