Travels with Dinno: Aireborough

Greetings fellow travellers. This week's installment takes us up the road to Leeds. Dinno visited Aireborough RUFC. Despite them being relatively local to Huddersfield where I coached and where the boy played our only meeting with them had been at Keighley festival a couple of years ago. For the record Huddersfield won comfortably.

We set off slightly later than planned and the rushed back because I had forgotten to bring the directions. I tend to travel using the force. The dark side is strong within me and I can go somewhere once and more or less find the way there again even if I take a wrong turn.

Aireborough is based in Yeadon which is the next 'town' along from Rawdon where I used to work. For the record I don't much like Leeds as a place and went there very infrequently. As a driver the place is a nightmare as the road signs are terrible. But that is by the by.

We regularly passed the club on our way to Ilkley or Otley. When we arrived we had difficulty finding anywhere to park. We headed towards the clubhouse then up to some rugby pitches where we ran into Kev who said we were on another pitch. We headed over in the direction we had been sent and just about managed to avoid the people doing the orienteering. The pitch we were on was reached by going down a bank with some very dodgy steps carved into it, over a bridge which was slippy beyond belief and up another bank.

The track was saturated and the mud was deep. It felt like some kind of endurance course just to get to the pitch.

The match started and straight away Aireborough put us under pressure. They preferred the kicking game and it seemed to work for them. We had most of the territory, most of the possession and looked more likely to produce something. However, we didn't play with our brains and we lost a game we should have comfortably won. The score finished 5-0 to Aireborough. Our problem was that we kept running into contact when we didn't need to. As a team we need to learn that individuals cannot beat 15 players on their own and the support needs to be better. There is no faulting the effort and work rate of the team at all.

On a slightly irritable note the referee did appear to be a bit of a 'homer'. Three times in the first half he gave Aireborough (he was an Aireborough coach) the put in at scrums which should have gone to Dinno and when a similar thing happened in Aireborough's favour in the second half he made the correct call and gave them the scrum. I don't like criticising refs because they do a hard job and even the top refs make mistakes but such obvious oversights only fosters resentment amongst young players and supporters alike. That being said even if the ref had been from Dinnington it is by no means certain that he would have favoured them over Aireborough.

It is a bit difficult to judge the food on offer as it had taken so long to actually get to the club and with the state of the ground I didn't actually go and get anything to eat until after the match. By that time the bacon was cold but appeared to be well cooked. The players meal was pasta which seemed to go down well by and large.

This weekend we were due to operate a dual site policy with half the players going to Sheffield and the other half back up the M1 to Moortown in Leeds. However, last night Moortown cancelled the fixture and so everybody is now going to Sheffield this weekend.

Wherever you are enjoy your rugby and glory in this marvellous sport which we support week in and week out.