After last weeks’ agonising defeat to Manchester, Park left believing they had a weekend off. However, it turned out on Tuesday that this was not the case. So came Del’s usual week of scrabbling around for players before a few late drop outs on Friday night / Saturday morning led us to raid the fourth team for players. Unfortunately, only three of the 1st/2nd team had made them selves’ available to bolster the squads. As always Del came through though and we took a squad of 20 to Lymm to play a side in the league below us.

This was the next difficulty of the day. After the early weeks of the season, when the main selection criterion for the threes’ was: ‘do they have a car’, Del and I forgot this important point as we had two cars between sixteen of us. Step up star Clubman Dave Flan, who persuaded his wife to run a couple of the lads down to Lymm. Much appreciated as we would have been screwed otherwise. So many thanks to the Flanaghan’s.

We arrived at Lymm which had winds of gale force proportions, though they did manage to find a slightly sheltered spot for us to play on. Lymm started brightly and due to a bit of miscommunication and general sleepiness from the Park defence, scored the opening couple of tries and a penalty.

Park managed to get a score back after some good back play. Park looked pretty good at times with the ball in hand but struggled to maintain possession and was turned over far too frequently. Part of this is due to another new look team and although the fifteen players are good enough, they maybe lack the experience of playing together regularly.
In fairness we were well beaten by Lymm, who controlled the ball well and ran in some good tries. There were a few flash points during the game which left Ciaran a little battered and saw a Lymm player in the bin. Park didn’t feel like they’d been overly helped by the referee in this respect, but he didn’t make half as many mistakes as the Park XV. Park lost their heads in the second half and instead of pulling together did let their heads drop a little. All in all a bad day at the office all round.

Playing wise there were some major negatives. The loss of Kris Gower after three minutes (Kris hasn’t fully torn his ACL, which is a relief but he’s going to be out for a couple of months, get well soon Kris), closely followed by Olly Burt forced us into early changes, and although Mark Ferguson and Ben Collinson deputised ably, they were changes we hadn’t anticipated. On the positive side, Gethin, Mark and Steve had fantastic games. A good performance from Nathan (a former youth team player from BPFC), back after three years out and a welcome back for Eddie who not only ran the line but got onto the pitch as well for twenty minutes, good to have you back Ed. Steve in particular, who has had to travel to various places around the north-west in recent months only to get part of a game, was outstanding and deserved the Man of the Match award.

To the bar, where the best part of the afternoon was to ensue. We were fortunate enough to witness a conversation between Ruben (Spanish) and Ciaran (Irish), where neither of them could understand what the other was saying. I think this may have been one of those, ‘you had to be there’ moments. That said no one understands Ciaran, including his compatriots Mark and Steve.

This was a fairly disappointing performance and it was a pretty glum changing room afterwards. Some people, myself included, need to put their hands up and say they didn’t play their best and probably could have given a bit more. But anyway, onwards to the next game on our mini tour that takes us to fellow strugglers Sandbach, in a must win game for the Wyverns. Get yourselves available early, and if you get a chance, learn to drive!

P.S. I've again forgotten the try scorers, Andy D we know you didn't get any so feel free not to say you did
P.P.S Well done to the 4s, great result considering we nicked half your back line in the morning!