365 Sporting Days

The 1st day back at work after the Christmas break is always a bit of a struggle, what a nasty shock when my alarm clock went off at 6am! Just nasty!  Not so bad though when I had a rugby match to look forward to!  Monday night is usually meeting night for me so I miss most of the A League games, but for the semi-final between Saracens Storm and Newcastle Falcons A – No Meeting!  Result!

I always give myself plenty of time when navigating the M25 at rush hour time, so set off from work with over 2 hours to spare.  It seems as is generally the way most of the traffic was travelling in the opposite direction to me, and amazingly I only felt the need to shout (to myself) at other drivers a couple of times!  Oh, and sound my horn very loudly at the man who thought he could enter the A1 from the 3rd lane when it can only be accessed from the 1st!!!!!!!  Silly man!

A word of warning if you do decide to drive to Allianz Park, or come to think of it The Hive, home of Barnet and London Broncos – The A1 used to be a 70mph road until you got the roundabout where it splits off to the A41 but the speed limit’s been reduced to 50mph, I can see a few fines arriving in the post.

A League rugby means parking at the ground and arriving nice and early meant I got a spot close to the gate; bumping into David Strettle was a nice start to the evening!  Hello Chuck – always a good greeting for a rugby league lover!

The A League games are included as part of the season ticket so no additional cost on the night.  I had a hot chocolate from the very Coffee Bay people with a couple of free mince pies thrown in!  Not the healthiest of teas, but very nice all the same.  The hospitality style areas were open and Saracens were serving food to a reasonable number of people.  I availed myself of one of the squidgy leather sofas to start this write up.

And so to the match – it’s going to be really hard not to write a virtual report, but as it’s a school night (literally) and late and this isn’t the place for such meanderings I’ll give a very quick summary.

It was a cracking game! Quality tries aplenty in a game that looked to be won by Saracens Storm before Newcastle Falcons propelled themselves into the lead.  There were 3 yellow cards shown, 2 going the way of Saracens and 1 to Falcons.  As a Saracens fan it was great to see some of the young talent coming through, as well as seeing Ernst Joubert score a decent wingers try.

Mike Ellerey bagged a couple of tries as he interacted brilliantly with Tim Streather, but the best moment of the game for me was the solo effort scored by Twinkletoes Ben Ransom.  He excelled playing for the 1st team on Saturday and repeated his efforts for the A team.

The final score was Saracens Storm 46 Newcastle Falcons A 35; both teams can be rightly proud of their efforts in producing a great game!

An added bonus at the end of the game was to be able to partake of a cuppa and have a chat with good friends Alun and Sharon and new friends Emma and Andrew, always good to have a good laugh after a great game.

The journey home was a smooth one in spite of numerous roadworks, with my iPhone connecting for this journey I went for a random playlist and goodness confirmed to myself that I have a whole lot of rubbish amongst the decent tunes!  I’ve decided to pick a tune of the journey from now on in and the winner tonight was Vienna by The Fray!

A low key game facility wise this evening so no list to finish off – I need to add some photos and get some beauty sleep.:-)