The Crusaders awoke on the morning of the game to the welcome and hardly unexpected news that Selby’s pitches were submerged and that unless we wanted to play rugby using quickly assembled submarines, the game would instead have to take place at Wetherby; the only pity being that we’d miss out on the customary post-Selby trip to cracking boozer The Chequers at Ledsham.

The wind was perhaps even stronger on the back pitch than it had been against Yarnbury’s ringtastic ‘3rd team’ the previous week, but at least Selby had the decency not to stitch us up in the same manner, despite bringing former Wetherby 1st Team fly-half Foxy - who must now have played for every club in Yorkshire - with them to play at 9.

The fact that Selby’s seemingly well-struck kick-off into the wind only travelled about three metres indicated that Wetherby would have to rack up the points to get a good lead to take into the second-half.

The opening exchanges were a little stodgy, Selby’s forceful pack looking to rumble the ball on, with their impressive Number 8 the chief ball carrying threat. There was also a bit of niggle, and Wetherby were reduced to 14 men for 10 minutes when the usually peace-loving Donovan fan Liam Hogan was yellow-mellow-carded by the ref after a scuffle on the ground and then a face-height tackle.

But when the diminutive Johnny Danby - playing at blindside for the first time - absolutely poleaxed their openside on the halfway line, causing him to spill the ball forward, Wetherby took full advantage, shipping the ball wide quickly to speedster Harry Kaye on the wing, who outstripped the defence before looking inside to find Reedy who opened the scoring. Reedy himself probably doesn’t have a clue how he managed to keep up to be in the right place at the right time - perhaps he’d been propelled there by some well-inclined deity? - but it was great support play and a good score.

That Danby tackle seemed to bring Wetherby to life, with debutant inside-centre Seb and full-back Young Sav causing havoc with their running, and it was little wonder when Wetherby very quickly scored again after a lovely delayed pass from Sav to 17-year-old-with-the-body-of-a-56-year-old Matty Finch to score.

And it was not soon after that Finchy put the paramedics on stand-by when he intercepted on the halfway line, broke into something resembling a sprint to evade all tacklers and then very nearly did a Christophe Dominici by almost dropping the ball when grounding it over the try line. Too knackered to take the conversion himself – and let’s face it, he slots the difficult ones and misses the sitters in front of the posts – Sav added the extras.

It looked for all the world as though Wetherby would rack up a massive and unassailable lead at this stage, but things began to go awry as – maybe initially in the interests of keeping the game alive – the ref started to giving increasingly bizarre decisions in Selby’s favour. Most puzzling was his insistence on giving against penalties against Wetherby tacklers for not rolling away when whale-like Selby forwards had flopped on top of them to prevent them from doing so. And it was from one of these perplexing penalties that Selby got themselves back into the game, taking advantage of collective Wetherby bafflement to rumble one over.

As the second-half began, it soon became very apparent that Weth hadn’t put enough points on the board in the first, as – to give them the credit they deserve – Selby’s pack really put Wetherby under the cosh, pinning us back in our 22. And there they would remain for virtually the entire half, rumbling the ball on, with their powerful Number 8 to the fore, and boshing the ball over in spite of great tackling throughout from a brave but increasingly weary Crusaders side that didn’t have the luxury of clearing their lines due to an unrelenting wind blowing against them.
Selby got themselves level and then ahead in what had become trench warfare tilted in their favour thanks to their heavier artillery, but Weth refused to lose heart.

And, indeed, the referee’s less than helpful refusal to recognise the oppo’s regular offside infringements or to acknowledge that they were killing the ball at the breakdown was to come back to haunt the Crusaders when Seb was, for some inexplicable reason, pinged for holding on when one of their fat lads belly-flopped on top of him in the tackle, preventing the Crusaders from taking advantage of the promising opportunity Seb seemed to have created.

There was to be one last chance for the Crusaders to snatch victory, as Liam summoned some rage to smash through pretty much the entire Selby pack and covering defence before offloading in Finchy’s direction just metres from a by now undefended Selby try line, the ball bouncing tantalising in front of Finchy before he realised that he’d have to buy a jug if he scored a hat-trick and decided to knock on instead.

In fairness, this had been Finchy’s best game of the season, and he was only outdone by Johnny Danby, who did a fairly good impression of a considerably smaller Joe Worsley in chopping down trees all day.

Overall, this was a performance the Crusaders could be incredibly proud of, with no man giving any quarter, and it was only a shame that we couldn’t have racked up more of the points we deserved for some great rugby in the first-half.