Brilliant Day!

We had to get up at 5.45 AM. That's three really early starts in a row but at least it was for an exciting reason this time: we were driving down to Wembley for the Challenge Cup Final against Warrington who we just beat by one point last week in the league.

We set off very slightly late - not too late as Brian was hoping to miss the charges for travelling in London. The journey went smoothly until Brian missed the turning for a motorway service station due to misleading signs. The reason we needed to stop, other than loo visits, was to retrieve the Satnav from the boot so it could lead us to the place where we had booked parking. 

We travelled blind and hoped we were not going too far out of our way until we reached the next station. A further delay occurred there due to Bri heading straight back to the car to sort out the satnav after his loo visit, leaving me to find my own way back to the car - or not, as it turned out. After a bit of aimless wandering I rang him and he came to find me.

More wasted time, followed by heavy traffic once we were finally on our way We will be paying that charge after all...! 

We arrived in the Stadium for the tail end of the women's final, won easily by St Helens over Leeds. Before our match started there were the usual Wembley formalities with Abide with Me and the National anthem sung by Katherine Jenkins. This was followed by moving tributes to former Leeds player Rob Burrow who passed away due to Motor Neurone Disease just a few days ago.

The game started dramatically with a Wigan player being sin binned for a high tackle straight from the kick-off, closely followed by a Warrington player for the same offence. Wigan had two regular first team players suspended following similar incidents in last weeks' game - one of which was our main goal kicker!

Didn't matter in the long-run! Harry Smith took over the kicking again and got 100% It was a scrappy game interspersed with flashes of brilliance, mostly from our lads! Bevan French was man of the match and rightly so! 

Wigan won 18-8.  The presentation took place just below where we were seated so we could not get proper shots - I took this one of the screen in the stadium instead! There are extras of part of the stadium from outside and the pitch celebration.

Coming home was a relatively straightforward trip other than the sun making it almost impossible to see at times which made motorway driving a bit scary! 

Home to feed a hungry and very vocal Minstrel. We are both shattered now - we will sleep well tonight, I hope! 

It's my intention to catch up on comments in the morning, or whenever I am up and sufficiently coherent.