Egremont have been given the honour of staging Cumbria’s home game in the Bill Beaumont County Championship next month.

Bleach Green will host the game with Leicestershire on Saturday, May 13 (3pm).

An Egremont spokesman said: “It’s a great honour for the club to be asked to stage a senior County Championship game and we are expecting a sizeable crowd.

"We are sure it will be a wonderful occasion and more details will be announced closer to the date.”

Egremont completed their Cumbria League programme at Bleach Green where they lost 39-24 to neighbours Whitehaven, who have finished runners-up to promoted Keswick.

Whitehaven are now awaiting the outcome of Burnley’s final game in North Lancashire to see who they meet in the play-offs.

Burnley have to beat North Manchester in their final game to go above Didsbury Toc H who have completed their fixtures.

The regulation season certainly did not go out quietly at Bleach Green as the two local rivals served-up a fiercely contested match with plenty of strong and meaningful tackling. Ten tries were scored during a very entertaining encounter.

Whitehaven face Keswick in the Cumbria League Cup on Saturday at Cockermouth and also still have that important promotion play-off match to complete.

Perhaps these games might have been on the players’ minds as, despite making a perfect start with a try from their first attack, Whitehaven then found it difficult to build on this in the face of a very determined Egremont performance.

Indeed, the home team responded superbly to the early set-back by scoring an excellent try of their own when fly-half Fraser McNee darted through the visitors’ defence following some quick ruck ball from the Egremont forwards.

A Brad Jackson conversion tied the game at 7-7 before Whitehaven regained the lead with a neatly taken converted try.

Egremont continued to take the game to the visitors and, following a succession of attacks, Egremont’s captain and number eight Jimmy Temple surged over the line to bring the score back to 12-12.

Whitehaven managed a penalty goal just before half-time to reach the break with a slender 15-12 lead.

However, there was no respite for the visitors during the break as they were subjected to a very forceful half-time team talk which could probably have been heard back at the Playground.

It seemed to have the desired effect as, within 15 minutes of the restart, Whitehaven had capitalised on a succession of errors from the home team to score three unanswered tries which appeared to have put the game beyond Egremont’s reach.

Encouragingly, Egremont did not see it that way and added two further tries of their own with McNee getting his second and wing Albert McKay claiming the try bonus point in spectacular style with a superbly acrobatic effort in the corner.

Whitehaven closed out this enthralling match with their sixth try of the afternoon.

Champions Keswick blitzed Millom 81-0 in their final game with third-placed Cockermouth defeating Windermere 35-7.