The third Saturday of December was certainly a ‘Soggy Saturday’ as far as local sport is concerned.

There was no action for either Sidmouth Town or Sidmouth Chiefs and, across the board, there was precious little action for rugby and football teams, with locally, only Ottery St Mary beating the weather to stage their football match.

In local football, Sidmouth Town had been due to host Axminster Town in a much anticipated South West Peninsula League Eastern Division game – but the Manstone Lane meeting – like all seven scheduled matches in the division, fell to the rain.

Town are without a scheduled league game this coming Saturday (December 22) and so will next be in action when they entertain Budleigh Salterton in a Boxing Day morning meeting (11am).

In the remainder of the South West Peninsula League, just one of the seven Premier Division and two of the six Western Division matches, beat the weather.

The Macron Devon and Exeter League fixture list was all but wiped out by the rain. There had been 55 league and county cup matches set to be played and just two survived – matches at Ottery St Mary – who claimed an eighth straight Division Three win with a 6-1 Washbrook Meadow win over Newton St Cyres while the other match played was at Kenn Valley United where the Division Seven basement side lost a 12th straight game – this time going down 4-2 to visiting Culm United Reserves.

Spare a thought for Mid Devon Dunkeswell players – they saw their Devon Intermediate Cup match against Elmore postponed for the third successive Saturday owing to the weather and they will now try again next Saturday to see who make progress in this prestigious competition.

In rugby, Sidmouth Chief’s Western Counties (West) fixture at Winscombe is now one of four matches that will be played next Saturday (December 22). Just four of the day’s schedule matches took place and they produced home wins for St Austell (45-22 v Saltash), Tiverton (16-15 v Paignton), Truro 21-19 v Kingsbridge and Wadebridge Camels 19-13 v Falmouth).

Those results do mean that Sidmouth’s lead at the top has been cut to six points by St Austell, but the Chiefs can restore their 11 point advantage with a win at Winscombe next Saturday.