A Great Day Out In The Border City

Having spent the previous Saturday (7th March) enjoying the Launch Festival in Arlecdon, the last place Crusaders Masters expected to be was back in glorious county of Cumbria a week later! However, that is exactly what happened.

Crusaders were scheduled to play Edinburgh Cannons up in the Auld Reekie however, on Friday midday, the pitches were declared unplayable! Nightmare! With a full team and transport sorted Crusaders were keen to salvage something. So whilst Ben tried some of our Yorkshire contacts, Jase got hold of our Cumbrian contacts.

Amazingly, bang on time, after saying “give me an hour,” Geoff from Carlisle had us sorted for an away day in the Border City. Game on!

Crusaders travelled in good numbers and were joined by Barry S, Barry Mc and Alex from North East Thunder, Andy from UKAF, Ollie from Swindon St George and Grant from Arlecdon. Always good to have numbers for rotation.

Due to the short notice Carlisle were also backed up by some keen bodies from Arlecdon.

The ensuing game was a great contest with the White, Black and Red shorters pretty much matched for physicality with some barnstorming runs from both teams. Yellow shorters and above, for both teams, played some fantastically elusive rugby with ball in hand with the Carlisle lads playing a great close short passing game to cut holes in the Crusaders defensive line on occasion.

Despite the physical nature of the game, it was played in true Masters spirit and was a great game to be part of.

Despite the short notice Carlisle Masters left no stone unturned and the club house at the venue had us for the 3rd half. Though, we were a bit taken aback by some strange game, on the TV, which looks like rugby but they spend a lot of time stood in lines, throwing each other in the air. Rugby Onion, or something like that 😉.

Master of the match for Crusaders went to Don “Snakehips” Payne, well done!

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZNR9JH1FL/

There was also a bolt off between JV (Carlisle) and his nemesis JT (Catterick), or at least there would have been if JT hadn’t been tea total for the last 3 years! Alex took JT’s place, and subsequently lost, poor form.

A number of us had travelled by minibus, and our driver, Ben, was very generous on the route back, with his route planning. Of course there was beers for the bus, but we had a brief stop at ‘spoons in Penrith before moving onto The Chamley Arms in Warcop. For the latter a number of the veterans amongst us swapped timelines of when they were last in there. The closest we could get was 20+ years ago, on Op Fresco (fireman’s strike) when it affectionately referred to as “The 6 Fingers.” Needless to say it looks nothing like it did then and we enjoyed a lovely few pints and craic with the other customers. We’ll be back. Thanks Ben for driving, appreciated.

Crusaders Masters would like to thank our shirt sponsors Marstons, our polo sponsors Burties Hair Design, eCreative, Lighthouse Risk Management, iSecure Group and Top Third. We’d also like to thank our trainingu apparel sponsors. The Hildyard Arms, 4 aces, Richie McGrath pre-training and breaking, JDN First Aid and AA First.