A Great Finish to a Great Season

On Saturday Crusaders Masters concluded their season with a home game against Doncaster Toll Bar Masters.

Toll Bar travelled with great numbers for the return leg, Crusaders having travelled to them in late July. Crusaders suffered from some last minute availability changes but still fielded 13 players for the fixture.

However tight numbers meant not everyone would be playing in their preferred position.

Toll Bar, just like the first game, proved to be well organised in their go forward and utilised their Gold shorters really well, and proved very hard to handle.

Crusaders kept plugging away and had some great organisation and skill in the form of Andy Gray and Ross Turner. It was great to see Gav Cole make a return and reverting back to his true coloured shorts (Black) having previously been playing in Gold due to injury. He certainly added some grunt to the go forward alongside JT and Den Nowell.

The stand out moment had an extra comedy value to it, when deep in Crusaders half, Don Payne found himself with a loose ball, after a trademark jink of the hips he was in the clear and just as we all thought we’d never hear last of it in the bar, he slowed down - clearly deciding a) it was just too far to run or, b) he wouldn’t make it or c) BOTH! Luckily Den was on hand and received Dons pass and race down field for his first ever Masters try! This fact (his first try) is apparently correct, and we have accepted the verification through the 653 times Den mentioned it in the bar!

As ever the game was played in great spirit. This has been our first season playing Toll Bar Masters. Both games were very enjoyable and we hope we can sort fixtures with them for next season.

For more photos please take a look at our TikTok post. https://vm.tiktok.com/ZNdtLtBNe/

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 to thank our training apparel sponsors. The Hildyard Arms, 4 aces, Richie McGrath pre-training and breaking, JDN First Aid and AA First.