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Have we all recovered from the Easter weekend’s exploits? I think I’ve just about sorted myself out.What about the rugby eh? What can I say about Thursday night? Well I’ll start with the conditions, dreadful springs to mind (I’m keeping it clean), I don’t recall the last time I’ve been anywhere (not only rugby related) when I’ve seen so much rain, at one point I was sure I spotted Noah travelling in his much reputed ark past Asda down the Atherleigh Way. Then throw the gale force winds and we had a recipe for disaster. In fairness to both sides, the performances in those conditions we’re pretty good. Yes you’d get handling errors, when don’t you? And sure it wouldn’t make for an open expansive game, as I’m sure our lads would prefer, but overall the quality was decent enough. The lads really soaked up the Leigh attack in the first half when we had the worst of the nights weather in our faces (The players that is) and going in 2 – 2 at half time, I’m sure Shaun and the boys were more than happy with that. In the 2nd half it was our turn to use the conditions and we did it excellently, Myler and Ratchford’s kicking kept Leigh pretty much on the back foot and gave our forwards such as Stapleton, Nash, Leuluai etc a great platform to take the game.

As for the fans, are we mad? (Don’t answer that), firstly we drop everything to make a 6 O’clock kick off, we turn our back on the chance to sit in the local and watch it on Sky in the warmth, we then swapped the relatively sheltered end to move to brave the storm in the 2nd half. I’ve got to say the atmosphere created was first class. I’m sure like the rest of you, no matter what the weather, we wouldn’t swap the result for anything, and I for one would do it all again, achoo bless me.

As for Monday, the boys did everything asked of them, I know the performance levels dropped occasionally, they will  from time to time, it must be difficult do keep focused for the full 80 when you’re running tries for fun early on. Having said that, every time we needed to turn it on we did. Without really every getting our of 2nd gear took the game pretty convincingly against a well-drilled Rovers outfit. Another mention for the crowd, 5,139 against Fev in a National League 1 match is another great effort by the club, long may it continue.

Batley away on Sunday and we know only too well from history how tough it can be there, especially looking at the weather forecast!

See you there.