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.