A rugby club is helping out a cricket club which burnt down in suspicious circumstances.

Pinner and Grammarians Rugby Football Club invited Hatch End Cricket Club - with which it shares Shaftesbury Playing Fields in Grimsdyke Road, Hatch End - to use its clubhouse after the cricket club's neighbouring premises were torched on the evening of Saturday June 14.

These pictures, sent in by reader Michele Lawrence show the defiant club playing a match and flying its flag again just one week after the disaster.

The suspicious fire started hours after a confrontation between players and youths which caused a game between Hatch End and visitors Old Camdenians to be abandoned.

Rugby club president David Hiles said: "They now use our pavilion on Saturdays and Sundays.

"We do sympathise with their position because our clubhouse burned down about six years ago and we had a long battle with our insurance company over two years so we used Hatch End's clubhouse.

"As soon as I heard about the fire I rang up their secretary as we owe them quite a bit. We're returning the favour."

Mr Hiles said anti-social behaviour and wanton damage had been a persistent problem for years on the recreation land the clubs shared.

"We have had continual vandalism. It's just deliberate damage and for the last couple of years in the summer there's always a crowd of kids there on a Friday."

In February, yobs blocked a drainpipe with mud, bottles and timber, causing the rugby club's building to flood.

Mr Hiles added: "You always find bottles, knickers, condoms and needles around the back."

Hatch End CC's social secretary Graham Wild said: "We're very grateful for the generosity of the rugby club.

"We've been able to fulfil all of our fixtures and we're brining together an action plan for fundraising events.

"As a club, we're trying to take this opportunity and make a new start."

He said the full cost of building a replacement pavilion could be as much as £200,000.

Mr Wild said: "It's very likely that we will be back in our pavilion in the next couple of seasons, the real-istic target being 2010."

A Harrow Police spokesman said: "The fire is being treated as suspicious but has not yet been confirmed as arson by the London Fire Brigade.

"There have been no further arrests."

One cricketer and one youth were arrested on suspicion of affray in relation to the confrontation.

Anyone who wishes to donate money to Hatch End CC should contact Mr Wild via email at wild.man@btinternet.com