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.