Widnes 5 – Manchester 55

A gap in the snow, frost and awful weather allowed us to venture out again this Sunday, down the M56 to Widnes. Whilst coming up against them regularly in festivals through the mini ranks we couldn’t recall having played against them over the past couple of seasons. They were always tough opposition when the boys were younger and we mostly finished second in our meetings with them.

With Brad Pitt away at The Golden Globes we were struck down with wingers curse when Hanno appeared to be hobbling during the warm up; he was moving more stiffly than Cannabis, so we knew things were not clever! We therefore decided to give him a rest as there are many important fixtures to come this year and our choice of wingers for the day would cause amazement and consternation in equal measure from the travelling posse of supporters “The Bacon Butty Hunters”

Clarky, GB and Finger looked like they had been at a sleepover the night before as did The Prof..... and he hadn’t!; we will need to take a look at our disciplinary code having been informed by Mrs Karate that the Wendyballers have a rule stating no sleepovers, pizzas or girls the night before a big game!

The pattern for the day was set from the off when quick possession was secured with Clarky leaping like a tin of salmon again securing the ball, through a few pairs of hands and GB added to his tally for the season. This was reasonably quickly followed by one from Wolfy, another couple from GB and a brilliant blind side dart from Mazlaar and the game was out of sight then.

Other than some good movement through the hands there were a couple of ‘Unbelievable Tekkers’ moments in the first half. The best though came from a tapped ball from the line out tidied up by the Captain who steadied himself took two paces backwards in the style of Danny Care ready to launch a box kick into the Cheshire sky clearly fancying himself as kicking back row forward in the Zinzan Brooke mould..... NOT! Ten yards sliced backwards, luckily the ref had spotted an infringement earlier.... no wonder the Captain tried to hide his face in the half time huddle.

The second half saw some tactical positional changes Sheap to the wing, Young Cannabis to scrum half (with his gum shield this week mum honest!), Wolfy to ten, the Captain to full back and then centre, Semple to the wing but the most significant was Karate occupying the left wing berth where he managed to run in four tries and nonchalantly side foot over a conversion; a great individual contribution and outscoring GB is worth a mention.

Mazlaar retains the Lazarus award again this week, making a sufficient recovery from his hand injury (that Plastic Jim thought needed to be amputated) to reappear as a ball boy for the first team later on in the afternoon; he just pipped McHooker who having gone off after being ‘run over’ by one of the Widnes forwards reappeared to finish the game in the front row.

If any of our future opponents are reading this then I have dietary request from The Sheap who turned his ovine nose up when informed it was bloomin pasta with bloomin tomato sauce for post game refreshment; everyone knows that Sheap only eat Chips and Burgers, like a good winger should.

So the day belongs to Karate who is off to catch flies in chopsticks like Mr Miyagi showed him!