Salford City Reds 18 Hull FC 35

There can be no denying that this was a big one. Hull have under-achieved just as much as us this term & taking them on at home would have to be targeted as a possible 2 points. Our recent record versus Hull has been poor but we've been desperately unlucky on occasions, not least last season when they controversially grabbed a last minute win at The Willows before kicking a last second drop-goal to win the match at the KC. We definitely owed them, big-time.

The early signs were that the players were just as much up for this one, importantly Mal was back (albeit starting from the bench) while Ian Sibbit had got through his long-awaited comeback at Saints and just as in last season's encounter we were out of the blocks very quickly. We created an opening on the left after just 4 minutes & Moule backed himself before duly finishing the move, Wilshere adding a fine conversion. Amazingly from the kick-off we played out a standard set of six ending with a big kick downfield which Shaun Briscoe adjudged was running dead, he waited & waited & waited for the ball to leave the field until it just hopped up at the last minute to give Luke Dorn time to pounce & make it 12-0 after 6 minutes.

It's fair to say though that none of us were getting carried away, we'd been here before of course (not least last season's corresponding fixture when an early Moule effort set us out to a quick 12 point lead only for us to lose). And so it was that quick hands from Horne put Raynor over in the corner. Cooke missed the conversion but more than made up for it with a fine solo try just moments later, 12-10. Time for some changes & Haggy & Mal came on, with Haggy you just instinctively know what will happen. First touch he charged in with the ball before spilling it at the 1st contact & Domic fed it wide to Sing to scoot over the remaining 20 metres unopposed. 12-16.

Paul Cooke was tormenting us by now and his kick through was comfortably gathered by Tickle to stretch the lead, worse was to follow as once again Mal went down clutching his knee & headed down the tunnel. Thankfully Hull couldn't add to the score against a thoroughly disjointed looking Salford side and we went in just about in touch at 12-22.

Amazingly the 2nd half saw a mini-renaissance, we enjoyed far more possession & Robbo's high kick was collected out left by Wilshere for a good try. The goal was superb & we were only 4 points back from Hull now. Haggy decided to gift Hull another 2 points with a reckless high-shot but we continued to look dangerous with ball in hand. Then with a missed kick for touch from a penalty the whole momentum stopped. That one moment seemed to be when we decided to give it up & Horne added a late drop-goal to seal the points for Hull. What followed was an embarrassing defensive effort from the Reds to allow Horne a late try & causing me to do something I'd always considered alien, I left the ground early. As I made my way to the Tavern I heard a cheer, forcing me to run back in at the Variety Club end to see whether we'd raised some token resistance. I was met by Karaoke Steve, "Don't bother Chris.", he said, "They've scored again pal, get yourself a fucking pint". It was the best advice I could have possibly received.

St Helens 48 Salford City Reds 4

Easter Monday is always a bit of a downer, after a 4 day bender you can see work looming inescapably on the horizon once again, pulling you back to reality. It's even more of a downer when you have to travel to St Helens & witness your side take it's annual arse-humping. To make matters worse, the sunshine of the past 10 days had decided to do one (at the exact same time I sat down in the beer-garden of the Bridgewater the previous day) & the bank holiday rail replacement services were in effect.

At least Saints is easy enough to get to from our gaff, a short walk to Patricroft station provides you with a direct route to St Helens Junction (which granted is a long way from the centre of St Helens) and this is the route I plan to enable me to meet up with a Saints fan for an hour or so before catching up with the lads near the ground. However, the best laid plans & all that, the rail replacement bus shot past me without stopping! When the next one didn't even turn up, I decided to sack it & head to Eccles to meet up with the boys.

The back of the bus is swiftly taken up by our group & plenty of funny stories of away days gone by pass the 40 minutes or so before we arrive at Lea Green station to take camp in the nearby pub which has just opened. It's empty thankfully so we get prime seats near the telly & get ready for the 1st competitive Hull derby in more than a decade. It's a close one but it never really seemed to be in doubt as a Paul Cooke inspired FC edge out KR. Cooke's excellent return doesn't bode well for Friday & our visit from him & his Hull teammates.

With the game finished we order a group of taxis to shuttle us down to Knowsley Road, arriving early enough for a quick one in the Black Bull before making our way into the ground & round to the Eddington End. We at least manage to hold out for 8 minutes before Long darts over, from then the only contest in the 1st half is Saints against the clock; Gidley, Meli, Wellens & Gardner add further tries to make it 26-0 with barely half an hour played. Thankfully we keep them out for the remainder of the 1st half.

The 2nd half saw a handful of us head round to the opposite end amongst the Saints fans to try & re-create some of the classic comedy moments from last year's game. Sadly it was never going to be as funny, indeed, our mood darkened about 50 seconds into the 2nd half when Fa'asavalu crashed over for Saints. Mike Bennett added a couple & Roby added another to leave Saints 48-0 up within the hour & a truly embarrassing scoreline appeared to await.

Despite their cruise to victory, it was clear that the average Saints fan still has no sense of humour. As try after try crashed in past us, we struck up a chant of "The Super League, Is upside down, The Super League is upside down, we'll play the Giants at Old Trafford and St Helens are going down". Which prompted various straight-faced scousers to point out that we were far more likely to go down than them. Thanks. For. That.

It actually appeared as if we would have nothing to goon about until with a little over 5 minutes to go, Andy Coley put in a little grubber which he re-gathered to score out wide provoking massive goonage amongst our 8 or 9 hardy souls & a lusty chant of "We're not getting nilled". Still some helpful Saints fans pointed out that we were very likely to still lose the game. I must try & get hold of the local St Helens paper; I can just see the front-page headline now "POPE CAUGHT PRAYING SHOCKER; Pontiff admits to Catholic beliefs".

After the match the boys head out to Lea Green to take residency in the boozer while I head into the Black Bull to meet up with Nic & discuss quite how things have gotten as bad as this. To make matters worse Warrington have rolled over at home to Huddersfield & we are now firmly ensconced in the mire. We order taxis to the Glass House and when a couple of Warrington fans arrive in the pub our feelings are made perfectly clear to them. Next step is a cellar bar which has without doubt the most rank toilets in the world. They are minging & it's difficult to get the smell out of your nostrils for the rest of the evening, causing Ray to have a right rant at the poor barmaid on the way out.

A couple more pub stops in St Helens and then a train to Wigan for a few more pints while a tedious goalless draw between Charlton & some other Premiership no-marks goes on in the background before getting a kebab & a train back home. As we head through Bolton Ray suddenly remembers that Prison Break was on TV tonight and a few of us groan on realising we've missed it. This prompts Jay to inform us that the only programme he hates to miss is The Bill which provokes much laughter & piss-taking from all around. Jay's indignant responses to such jocularity suggest that we have touched a nerve & that in his eyes, no-one disrespects The Bill.

A long wait in the freezing cold for a taxi back from Salford Crescent just about puts a top-hat on a thoroughly miserable Easter weekend. At least we have a few winnable games to come now which should hopefully lift the gloom.

Salford City Reds 32 Warrington Wolves 34

The Easter weekend is a special one for all followers of The Greatest Game. No work (well for most of us) & two games to follow over the weekend together with a feast of televised derby games. I managed to get home from work in time to catch the 2nd half of Leeds' stolen win at Bradford the night before & then it was an early start on Good Friday to get warmed up for the big one.

Good Friday has been a particularly happy time to be a Red in recent years (unless Jesus Christ himself was a Red, I reckon he probably harbours bad memories of Good Friday). The last two have seen maulings of Warrington (one at the Willows, the other at Legoland) both played out on gloriously sunny days. Perfect beer garden weather for toasting memorable victories. The omens on Good Friday were certainly good; Warrington were without several key players (most notably Lee Briers and Adrian Morley) and the walk into Eccles was accompanied by blazing sunshine.

Nevertheless the mood over breakfast in the Eccles Cross was downbeat, most of us were expecting Briers to have made a recovery akin to that of JC himself all those Easters ago and lead Warrington to a win they would have been craving after our whitewash of them last season. However, as these thing always seem to pan out, optimism raised somewhat as the 3rd or 4th pint eased down the throats & we headed onto the short tram journey in very good spirits.

Arriving at the ground we sat outside the church hall with a pint to soak up the early spring sunshine & watch the Wire fans arriving. Mike was adding the finishing touches to a banner we hoped to give the light of day after the hooter which read "Dream On Cullen" (a reference to Cullen's post-match comments a week previously when Cullen responded that his only dream "is to beat Salford on Friday".

We head into the ground early, it would seem a good move as a good crowd is in attendance for this one. As soon as I enter I can see Briers warming up on the park, I fucking knew it! After a nervy opening, we got away to a great start as Wilshere crossed early on & then added the extras brilliantly to give us a 6 point jump-start. The lead wouldn't last long though as Rauhihi's green boots powered him over from close range, Bridge inexplicably missed the goal though & we held a slender lead.

Despite looking very sluggish, we extended our advantage with a Robbo try (again goaled by Wilshere) and we looked set to turn the screw when Wire were reduced to 12 with Leikvoll's sin-binning. However, in a story that's become depressingly familiar, we allowed the Wolves a series of easy yards culminating in a try for Grose right on the hooter (superbly goaled by Briers).

With a full compliment of players almost straight from the re-start, the momentum had swung in Warrington's favour. Even more so when Daley Williams was sin-binned & Fa'afili went over to give Wire the lead for the 1st time. We held out from then until Williams return & then a bit of magic from Dorn put us back in front & the game was heading for a grandstand final 20 minutes. How wrong we were; what followed was a humiliating capitulation as Rauhihi, Wainwright & Bracek were allowed through powder-puff tackling to cross & kill the game effectively. In the final 5 minutes we mounted some token resistance against a side with one eye on their next game no doubt. Some fine open rugby created tries for Littler, Williams & Hodgson. With time against us Wilshere had no time to set himself for the conversions & missed 2 of them meaning that we fell 2 points short at the hooter. However, all that happened was we applied a bit of gloss to the scoreline, the truth was we were well beaten & beaten by our own mistakes rather than good Warrington play. Not such a Good Friday after all.

So we headed straight for the Tavern to get royally drunk & forget the depressing reality of the situation but 1st we had a Wigan v Saints game to look forward to on Sky. After watching an intense 40 minutes of RL in which Saints held an advantage that didn't look safe by any means, our anticipation of the 2nd half was disturbed by the telly being turned over to Citeh v Charlton. After 15 minutes it was clear that it wasn't being turned back and an enquiry at the bar made it clear that their orders were 1st half of the rugby then put Citeh on. All this in a RL ground as well, amazing. A protest had to be led & I felt like just the man to do it, chants of "we all agree, rugby is better than Citeh" met with no response so I went round turning the TV's off. This met with a huge cheer from the assembled crowd but still no turning over. Finally a synchronised drinking up & leaving of the pub had the desired effect as the tedium at Eastlands was changed to the drama at the JJB.

We then headed off to the Height to round off the night, seeing a great band in the Welly & having a good sing-along to them before heading to what we thought was a karaoke night but turned out to just be a shit pub-singer. Oh and some cheeky sod nicked my copy of the really rather excellent RAW issue 1 (buy it now, you know it makes sense) out of my arse pocket when I was stood at the bar. I only hope it was a woman.

Gateshead Thunder 4 Salford City Reds 64

The road to Wembley was always going to start at a canter after the draw paired us with NL2 journeymen Gateshead. The only real thrill for the Red faithful from the draw was that we were away & so could look forward to a night on the pop in Newcastle. Any such thoughts were swiftly denied when the unavailability of their stadium meant that the game was switched to the Willows. Anyhow, having managed to get out of work at a reasonable time, I got to the Con club in time for a couple of quick pints with Nic before making my way into the ground for the expected rout.

To be fair Gateshead had started brightly & asked a couple of questions of the Salford defence before with our first attack, Andy Coley powered through & hared over by the sticks, Wilshere tagging the easy extras. Then, before the re-start, the floodlights failed causing around about a 15 minute delay (eating into valuable post-game beer time). Anyhow it got my creative juices flowing resulting in the cant "We've been to Hull and we've been to Leigh, but we've not got electricity, we're the team that you can't see, Salford RLFC". Well I liked it anyway!

The power restored Salford cantered to victory with further tries from Hodgson, Halliwell, Highton, Finnigan, Robinson x4 & Brocklehurst before Gateshead finally got over the line for a well deserved score from Clarke. Dodgy Hodgy had the final say in the matter though crossing for his 2nd try of the game before Wilshere added his 10th goal from 11 attempts. All that remained was to give the Gateshead players a deserved ovation for their efforts before de-camping to the Tavern to lament the non-appearance of Captain Thunder & his purple helmet. Dreams of Wembley may be just that but we're in the draw & the dream is still alive.