2017 Road To Wembley - Round Two

2017 Road To Wembley - Round Two

Only three days after their first round victory over Leigh Miners Rangers, Wigan St Patricks were drawn at home to Cumbrian National Conference League rivals Egremont Rangers.  It would be my first ever trip to St Pats’ Clarington Park ground and a first look at Egremont as well.

Thankfully, this round also gave me a nice short trip from my home again and, as we’d planned to visit some friends in Tadcaster in the evening, I was joined once again by my better half.  The journey took us about 20 minutes and when we got there at around 1:30pm for a two o’clock kick off the car park seemed worryingly empty!

We thought nothing of it so decided to make the most of what looked like a decent little ground and warm ourselves up in the clubhouse.  One of the guys at the entrance charged me £2.50 and was handing me a match programme when I indicated I was also paying for the wife.  So he handed me another programme and doubled the fee which left me thinking which one of them was complimentary ... the 20-page magazines or the entry??

Don’t get me wrong, the programme was a fantastic looking piece of work.  A full-colour magazine with a close-up shot of head coach John Ellis on the front cover, plenty of club photos of their junior and open age teams, a token welcome from a club official, and lots of adverts from sponsors and businesses around the town.

As with any visit to a new ground you never quite know what to expect, but walking into their clubhouse was like walking into a shrine to local rugby league.  St Pats, Wigan Warriors and Great Britain framed photos and shirts that had been donated to the club over the years covered nearly every wall.  It was fascinating to spend a few minutes wandering around looking at the merchandise hanging over the bar, doors and inside their lounge area.

After a nice hot brew to take the chill off we realised the clock was ticking and it was time for us to find a good spot on the edge of the pitch to watch the game.  It had just reached 2pm and we saw the St Pats team taking to the field at last ... in their training kit?  A quick check on Twitter and I saw that the game’s kick off time had been moved back to 2:30pm.  With that we went back inside to stay warm and got an alcoholic beverage at the bar.

When the game finally did kick off, we took a handy spot to the left of the St Pats’ dugout.  Here, we joked that it would be nice to come back to Clarington Park rather than face a long trip elsewhere for Round Three.

It looked like this might be the case as St Pats stormed into a 10-0 lead.  Well-worked team tries scored in the first ten minutes looked set to send the home side on their way to what I assumed would be a comfortable victory.  Egremont hadn’t even got out of the starting blocks, despite training out on the pitch right up until kick off.

But the side from West Cumbria finally got into the game (and out of training mode) and managed to score two converted tries of their own to find themselves just 14-12 down at half time after St Pats had posted another score in between.

One of the highlights of the half, apart from the rugby, was the sudden appearance at the sideline of the referee.  As he passed a piece of plastic to the St Pat’s coach to remove from the pitch, he responded to a surprised comment about handing over money with “you’ll be lucky, I’m from Yorkshire!”

As we did at Leigh, we decided to walk round to the opposite side of the ground for the second period.  Egremont had enjoyed a narrow victory over The Army in Round One and were rewarded with this trip to Lancashire and, as every club do from West Cumbria, had travelled down with plenty of vocal supporters who had parked themselves along that side of the pitch.

The good quality rugby continued in the second half and when Egremont snatched a deserved lead early on, their band of dedicated fans started to feel a victory could be on the cards.  But that was quickly quashed nine minutes later with another St Pats four-pointer to lead 18-16.  The kicker had obviously left his kicking boots at home as he missed a third conversion of the afternoon.

I started to think to myself that if this game finished as a draw, it would go to extra time.  I didn’t share that information with the other half as she’d already rolled her eyes at me that kick off was 30 minutes later than I thought and it would impact on us making it over to Tadcaster in decent time!

But thankfully, with their head coach pacing the sidelines shouting instructions to his young-looking side, it was Egremont who eventually took the spoils with two converted tries in the final few minutes to claim a 28-18 victory back to West Cumbria.

So it could well be another trip to the county of my birth for Round Three, as it was last year when I visited Kells for the second time, and I’ll be watching Tuesday night’s draw with tense anticipation.

At least it’s guaranteed not to be a trip to Canada ... for this year at least!

Looking back at these first two ties I've witnessed this year it looks like it's going to be another strong year for the NCL.  All three sides I've watched have provided excellent, entertaining rugby and whoever lifts the title at the end of the year will have had to play extremely well throughout the campaign.