This Sunday sees a repeat of last years' County Championship final match, as defending champions Lancashire take on Hertfordshire once more.

The southern side qualified at the expense of a Gloucestershire side who beat them by a two point margin last Saturday, but the bonus points earned over the course of the three match group games earned them their place at Twickenham.

Lancashire meanwhile were made to sweat, as Cheshire took them almost to the wire at Broughton Park. In the end, a 36-29 win saw them through, and they now aim to become the first county since Gloucestershire in the 1960s to win the tournament four years on the trot.

Hertfordshire, coached by Paul Turner, have been bolstered this season by the inclusion of Saracens squad players, including Joel Tomkins, who made the switch from Super League to Premiership in November 2011, after his signing from Wigan Warriors.

Another Saracens player who will be more familiar to the Red rose side is Petrus du Plessis. 'Para' won a Bill Beaumont Cup winners medal in 2009 as a prop in the Lancashire side who swept aside Gloucestershire, before his move to the Vicarage Road club.

Lancashire will be without their squad captain Louis McGowan, who missed the Cheshire game thanks to a ruptured appendix. As well as missing out on Twickenham this weekend, McGowan misses out on the England Counties tour to Africa next month. the lock played for the Counties side earlier this season at Preston against the Irreland Club XV, scoring the opening try of the game.

The game kicks off at 11am on Sunday, as the precursor to England v Barbarians, which is then followed by the County Championship Shield Final, between Surrey and Leicestershire.

Hi. I've set up this website as part of a university project.

I'm coming to the end of a Sports Journalism degree course at the University of Central Lancashire, am a follower of club rugby, and a reporter on National League one fixtures for The Rugby Paper.

Many of the players that I have seen over the course of the 2011/12 season will be taking part in this season's County Championship, and playing for a place in the England Counties squad to visit Africa this summer.

I have followed Lancashire's hat-trick of Bill Beaumont title wins from 2009-2011, reporting live from Twickenham last year for the Lancashire website.

The County Championship is one of the great rugby traditions, and having seen forum posts on Rolling Maul, I know that there must be a great deal more rugby followers who also have an interest in their county's fortunes each season.

Trying to keep abreast of the county results, and relevant information is difficult, and anyone who has used the RFU's results section knows how difficult it is to see every result in the one easy to use website - well hopefully here it is!

As well as being the place to see all the results, as a bit of a history geek as well, I'm going to use the site to archive material relating to the history of the Championship - therefore if anyone has any interesting information that they would be willing to share, please use the Contact page to get in touch.

The site has to be up and running fully by the 11th May for the project to be marked, and I am under instructions from the university that it should remain 'as is' until it is marked, so I would ask you to be patient initially if you don't see updated results from then for a few days or so.

In the meantime though, I hope that you will enjoy what you see, and spread the word.

Cheers
Peter