One Season, Four Trophies

Blurb to follow, but Wigan Warriors are Champions again..!

We spent the morning getting ready to go and generally dossing about.

The journey down went well until, as ever, we had to find out parking place. (The yard of a work contact of Brian's) Brian thought he'd be OK without the sat nav, but was soon going round in circles. We set up the sat nav. It wanted to take us what seemed like the wrong way. I tried Google maps on my phone. Brian did too, and confusingly they disagreed with each other. How does that even happen? 

Meanwhile the weather was atrocious, with rain falling heavily. Our meanderings and Brian's phone got us there in the end and we walked to the ground in various degrees of rain. Our seat, when we got to the grounds, was far better than I expected. The view was fantastic, and the seat itself was cushioned and comfy! Getting to it involved a bit of a climb, but not the vertical ascent we had on a past occasion.

Rugby Stuff
The build up to the game was good, and the entertainment were OK too - a Wigan based band named The Lathums. I'd not heard of them but apparently they'd had some chart success. They reminded me of the Arctic Monkeys.

It was a good game, a very close contest, played at times in some very inhospitable weather, including hailstones. (Pleased to say that Old Trafford's roof kept them and the heavy rain out!) The teams cancelled each other out a lot of the time in the first half, other than a bit of sheer magic by our Bevan French to score what would prove to be the only try of the game.

Bevan was Man of Steel last year, and would have been this year too, had he not spent a large part of the season injured. This year's holder of the award was firmly in Bevan's pocket for much of the game.

Hull KR threatened our line a few times, especially in the second half, but their attacks came to nought. We defended well, and KR were their own worst enemies at times, with lots of handling errors in good attacking positions. Some of that was due to good defensive effort on Wigan's part of course...

We've not conceded a try for four games now!

It finished 9-2 to Wigan. We took a drop goal with the last kick of the first and there was a penalty each in the second half. When the final hooter went, the crowd at our end went wild and the crowd at the the other end went home!

We saw them get their medals and the trophy, and the newly named Rob Burrow trophy for Player of the Match, which went to Bevan of course. They all celebrated and displayed all four Grand Slam trophies. I thought they all looked knackered!

Getting Home
Our journey home was somewhat annoying! We headed, slowly in heavy traffic, to the nearest service station for a huge coffee for me and to eat the snacks we had taken from home. The service station was crawling with KR fans as their journey home was the same as ours. They were friendly enough. Brian got a table and I stood in the Costa queue, which did not seem to move. A couple of people were served eventually by the lone lad behind the counter. Then he said that he had to close the branch until 11pm, and was not allowed to serve any more people - if he did give a reason I didn't hear it. The family of KR fans in front of me were served but the rest of us were turned away. 

I had a stroppy little mini-whinge when I went back to Brian, who was seated next to KR fans and I realised I was lucky for Rugby if not Chai latte. They agreed with me whilst enjoying their drinks and we moved on to the next service station where the Starbucks was closed.

Onwards to Ferrybridge! They were preparing to close and were only serving drinks - I only wanted a drink! The lone female assistant was great. She explained that she had been overwhelmed - coach companies are meant to let them know if they will be stopping at the services so that they can prepare with more stock and staff but they no longer seem to bother to tell them. The ground level staff know it is going to happen but the upper levels don't plan for it unless they get the notifications...

I ordered my large chai latte. I then discovered it does not have caffeine... no worries! She asked if I wanted a shot* of coffee in there - of course I did, and it was delicious - hot, spicy coffee! *(Or two... I had two...)

Brian had noticed that an exit junction was closed - he Googled and realised it was ours, so we left onto the A1 there were more roadworks but the traffic was so light it didn't really matter - it was plain sailing from there!

We ended up sitting up until 3 AM, and having a few drinks once we'd fed Minstrel, so not an early start this morning. We watched the game back on TV and I wrote this essay!

Extras: A rainbow and our view of the stadium.

Now to think about today's Blip...