COMPETITIVE rugby league made a return to the district on Sunday for the first time in seven months, as the Keighley Albion junior teams hosted a triple header of matches.

In the stand out game of the day, the club's Under-14s came up against a well-respected Elland side, who compete in the First Division, one tier higher than their Albion counterparts.

The visitors started strongly, with Albion finding themselves on the back foot and defending their own line.

Strong defence from Charlie Savage and Thomas Dunn-Birch kept Elland at bay for the opening 10 minutes, but Keighley soon found themselves 8-0 down after two well-taken tries from the visitors.

Albion gained some momentum in the game through the hard work of the forwards, as Isaac Middleton, James Richardson, Joe Priestley and Cody Leach all provided a platform for ventures into the Elland half.

They finally crossed the whitewash when Hamza Butt, playing at hooker, darted over after some excellent attacking play down the left channel.

Playing downhill in the second half, the U14s began to have the belief that they could come away with victory.

Players began to create space in open play, with Isaac Denton, Leach and Jack Hewitt putting Elland under pressure.

Two quick plays of the ball resulted in Denton diving over in the left corner to level the scores, after some more good play from Butt and the forwards.

With their tails up, mistakes were replaced with more focused attacking rugby.

A clever sequence of plays saw Albion take the lead for the first time in the game.

A well-executed kick by Sam Wild resulted in Albion possession in the Elland 20-metre area.

Two great link up plays between Ed Swainston and Dunn-Birch saw Wild put Kyle Horne in at the corner for an excellent team try.

Elland were not finished and continued to attack up the slope, but great Albion defence forced them to kick from deep in their final set.

Bradford Bulls scholar Savage returned the ball from his own line, beating five defenders before offloading to Butt, who rounded off a fine individual performance to seal a 16-8 Albion victory.

In the other two games, the Albion U15s lost 18-6 against Brighouse Rangers, while a much-changed U18s Academy were beaten convincingly by Wibsey Warriors, 42-14.

There was plenty of positives for the Albion coaches to take away from all three games, but undoubtedly community rugby league was the winner after such a substantial lay off.

Albion said huge credit needs to be paid to all of their hard working volunteers for ensuring that the games could happen.

The club also live-streamed the games on Facebook, with 1,500 tuning in for the U14s game alone.