Blessed with beer and sunshine

Another trip to Gateshead last week, the second time this season.

Just as the first trip back in February, this was a party bus, not just one of our number celebrating their birthday but two and both ladies so there’s no way I would mention their ages.

A group of the girls had travelled to Newcastle for the weekend and were only joining us for the game and the trip back, so a fairly quiet bus going out.

We were blessed with some wonderful weather, bright sunshine with the occasional cloud meant that the party got under way in the beer garden outside the Schooner.

All matches should start this way - good company, nice view and one or two home supporters asking if we could go easy on them.

I was, of course, hoping that we wouldn’t give them an easy time but knew that, following their hammering at Blackpool the week before, they would be well and truly up for the game.

The game started about as well as it possibly could, for a Town fan.

We kicked off and defended their first set of six.

Good Town defence saw them kick on last tackle, no real danger, too long and with no-one chasing.

A tap on the 20 saw one drive followed by a 40/20 from Darren Holt.

The resulting set of six saw Mike Backhouse in at the corner with only two-and-a-half minutes gone.

A second try within five or six minutes and it looked as though Gateshead would suffer a repeat of the previous week’s agony.

The home side stiffened their defence though and it took Town another 20 minutes before they scored again.

A half-time score of 24-6 looked very safe for Town but the second half saw a much more focussed Gateshead who were spurred on by some indiscipline from Town and, it must be said, some very vocal support from the home fans.

They never gave up singing about their Thunder Wonderland and even started singing ‘can we play you every week’ when they managed to score.

It’s a measure of how far they have fallen that being beaten five tries to one at half-time is reason for celebration.

We still failed to play at the same level of intensity for 80 minutes and the score looked much better for Gateshead than it could have done, and indeed should have done.

Still, as they say ‘a win’s a win’ and at this time last season we would’ve been delighted with three wins in a row.

But it’s not last season, it’s this season and expectations are higher, and a win, even if fairly comfortable, is great but not quite good enough when we know that the players are capable of far more.