Amateur leagues to resume as insurance row is resolved

Amateur fixtures will resume next Saturday after a solution was found to the insurance crisis that led to the postponement of the entire programme last weekend.

Barla, the governing body of the amateur game, ordered the scrapping of the fixture list after it failed to persuade its member leagues to pay greatly increased premiums for public liability insurance. But now the leagues have voted to accept a new policy under which "player to player" liability would be excluded.

"We're back playing next weekend, which is the important thing," Barla's chief executive, Ian Cooper, said yesterday. "We put the solution on the table and it was accepted after a thorough debate into the issue. Now we have all got to go forward shoulder to shoulder. It's now our priority to bring the Yorkshire Youth and Yorkshire Junior Leagues back into the fold."

Those two leagues precipitated the crisis by resigning from Barla last week and driving up the cost to the remaining clubs still further.

John Hopoate, the controversial winger who was banned for 12 weeks last year for sticking his finger up the backsides of opposing players, has been recalled to the Australian squad.

Hopoate, then with Wests Tigers and now playing for the Northern Eagles, thought his representative career was over after the distasteful practice was widely criticised, but he is one of nine players not involved in the National Rugby League play-offs who have been told to keep themselves in training for Australia's match against New Zealand in October.

The Australian captain, Andrew Johns, has become the first man to win the Dally M, awarded to the best and fairest player in the NRL, for a third time.

Dennis Moran, the London Broncos' Australian scrum-half whose last-minute try defeated Hull on Sunday, has been named as the Tetleys Super League Player of the Month for August. Castleford's Graham Steadman has won the monthly coach's award.