It was a wet, cold, Yorkshire 4 afternoon as the LMD arrived at Aireborough. After a painful loss to the same team the week before at the fortress, tensions were high. We were ‘soft cunts’ according to their match report, and this wasn’t just the front row they were referring to. There was one thing on our minds: vengeance. LMD were out for blood and ready to prove that promotion should be ours.

The ref quickly informed us he hadn’t refereed a game in about 2 years, so we knew we had one of the more up to date Yorkshire 4 refs. After he had finished flirting with Neil, the whistle blew and the battle commenced. Aireborough started the game with some attacking play. We were missing a few older boys whose joints had struggled with the cold weather, but Moral was high. We made some excellent aggressive tackles and repelled the onslaught. They scattered like children when Louie walks past a playground with his Movember attempt. Somehow, for the first time possibly ever, we weren’t pushed back in the scrum. This was probably because it was so muddy that now one could really push. Having a 7ft tall second row probably helped as well. Whatever the reason, this allowed a cheeky offload from Veall to put Elsie in directly under the posts in an example of set piece that actually looked quite good.

Everything started to come together and after a bit of back and forth a little grubber through allowed Veall to score under the posts. It was very considerate of him to make the conversion nice and easy. However, Almiron didn’t seem to catch on to this sentiment and in a piece of footballing brilliance he managed to hit the post and miss instead - quite impressive really. Apparently the ‘the Wind took it’.

Riccards had clearly got something on his mind, so after another lovely lineout from the well drilled, professional forwards who could actually do their job, he decided to crash ball it This left the rest of the team to wonder what was going on. Despite running into 5 large Yorkshire blokes, he managed to slide through and score a try in the corner, which he weirdly managed to convert.

A few good attacks from Aireborogh and it was half time. After Morgan helpfully reminded us 10 times it was still ‘0-0’, we went out to put the game to bed. A yellow card for ill-discipline put us on the back foot for a few minutes. Nevertheless, we held out. I think there was then a try that’s not really worth mentioning. It involved Oscar Heslop making an intercept and running the pitch so slowly that the rest of the team had to slow down so as not to reach the try line before him. In fairness, it looked like quite a good try in x2 speed. Ciaran then got really creative so decided to do the same thing 10 minutes later, which was converted, making it 33-0. In the last 10 minutes, fatigue was setting in. Pat Moran, who is now apparently a winger, narrowly missed out on a try in the corner. Coordination not being his strong point, the ball never quite made it into his hands. The excuse of ‘very slippy’ was a token effort at redemption. We stayed composed for the last few minutes and the whistle went for full time.

All in all, a great performance from the boys. Don’t think we will be referred to as soft cunts anytime soon