I AM writing this week's article from the heart of deepest southern England at an army camp where we are the guests of the Yorkshire Regiment – the Duke of Wellington's Regiment.
Everybody is unbelievably friendly and helpful in spite of our best efforts to get Justin Bishop locked up in the guardroom and Turts, our team manager, doing his best impression of Mr Grumpy every time we get stopped going in and out of the camp by
soldiers only doing their duty.
The invitation was secured by our intrepid Marketing and Media manager Martin Haythorne who turned down an invitation to come with us to look after our two Castle Park mice Martine and Marion.
I think his real reason was that he was terrified about what the lads might do to him whilst he was with us. Anyway a big thanks to the lads of the Yorkshire Regiment and we hope we can repay them with a visit to Castle Park later in the season.
We set off from Doncaster at 6am on Monday morning and a sign of the discipline within the squad was the fact that nobody was late. The coach trip down was fairly quiet – well as quiet as any coach can be that has Simon Grainger on board!
We were met by Mr Grumpy whose routine had been completely upset by the fact that our barracks were on two floors rather than the three he had been told. I tried to explain to him that the ground floor had two wings which he should imagine were two floors but that was beyond his comprehension so I gave up.
After lunch we set off for the assault course where the main talk was how we were going to get Ngalu Ta'u, our big Tongan prop, over the 12' wall. The general opinion was that it would be easier to get him to run through it than over it but that was vetoed by the PTI in charge so it was back to the drawing board.
Then nature took a hand, much to Ngalu's relief who was desperately trying to think of reasons himself. As well as having a 23in neck he has a 23in head and the army did not have a helmet to fit him.
I regret I am not allowed to give you the results of the assault course as I have had to sign the Official Secrets Act.
After Aled's soliloquy, the squad's entertainment committee divided us into teams and Lynn Howells, Bish, Aled, Turt's, our two physios and myself were put into "Dad's Army" and, believe it or not, we won.
In the evening, Lynn, Aled, Bish, Turts and myself went out to reconnoitre the local town and to find a hostelry where we could have a meal and a bonding session.
What do you think? Post your comments below. READ MORE Football headlinesMore BladesMore OwlsMore SpireitesMore RoversMore RedsMore MillersMore Ice HockeyMore rugby leagueMore rugby unionMore boxingSports columnistsAll sport categoriesThe full article contains 519 words and appears in Doncaster Star newspaper.
