Best Day of the Year (so far)!

Back-Blipping.

Today we were up early for a Saturday in order to get ready and travel up to Leeds to watch Wigan play for only the third time this year.

This was not the only reason we were going! First of all we went to meet up with our daughter Grace at her home for the first time. They have a lovely lived-in typical student house, with comfy furniture, creepy cellar and steep stairs. It was good to meet a couple of her and Sophia's other house mates too - great girls!

We treated Grace to lunch at Burger King then she went off to do some shopping and we headed to Headingley via the ticket office to collect our tickets which for some reason had not been posted out.

It was a blisteringly hot day and Leeds put the away fans on an open terrace in all the elements! It was a sweat-fest, and my face was matching the cherry stripes of my shirt! Leeds "scored" in the opening minutes of the game, right in front of the roasting Wigan fans and the scorer decided to stand there, finger to lips, shushing us. It was a questionable try though, and the ref sent it up to the video ref who disallowed it. Ohh dear! That lad got stick from our fans all game after that and Leeds did not cross our tryline again.

The eventual result was 50-0 to Wigan! It was not all one sided as it sounds, and there were times Wigan got to practice their defence too, and managed to keep them out. A good game - keeping us top of the table and doing the points difference no harm!

This photo was taken in the concourse on the way out of the ground. The lad in the Hawaiian shirt in the thumbnail is Callum our drummer - he is excellent for getting the crowd going and I have Blipped him before. We spent a few minutes in the concourse singing and celebrating on the way out - it was a fantastic atmosphere. It's hard to beat the in-it-together solidarity of a sports crowd for a sense of belonging! I'm not sure why some of the crowd decided to crouch down on the floor - I think Callum put the drum down so as not to have to hold it and the rest just followed suit!

After the game we popped back to Grace's for a short while for her to give Bri his birthday present and have another quick chat, then we were on our way home.

Once back and changed we went out to the local pub to see the band Manipulators who were playing there and to have a few drinks. It was like a sauna there too and we spent the intervals between the band's sets outside in the beer garden! A very good way to round off a really good day!