Wednesday 7 September 2011

The One About our Weekend at Wembley...

At the start of August M & his dad went to watch their rugby team in the semi-final.  I had been told that if they won that match the final was being held in Wembley on the Saturday of the bank holiday weekend.  When they came back that evening they were incredibly happy, as they had indeed won the match and were set to play in the final.  So they got straight onto ordering tickets for the final, and a hotel nearby.  I told them that I was coming too, I wasn't going to miss a trip out!

So the weekend finally came round, we set off at 7am in the car (on account of me still suffering from the sickness, and needing the loo fairly regularly!), and even saw a rainbow not far from home.



Which really wasn't a good sign as it meant we were heading into torrential rain!  But we came through it, and remembered to count the Eddie's that we saw along the way (only 18 on the way down).  We had to stop practically every hour on the way down, so we saw a good few service stations!  The first one was really quiet, but the second one was packed with all the Wigan Warrior fans that were travelling down in coaches, and we had passed a fair few coaches up till then.  But this service station was really crowded and noisy, and the queue for the loo's was out the door!  Needless to say we didn't stay too long!

We got to the hotel about 11:30am which, given all the toilet breaks wasn't too bad going.  Only problem was they wouldn't let us in our rooms until 1pm as they hadn't been cleaned yet.  So instead we had our packed lunch in the car park round the back of the hotel.  (This hotel was picked based on the fact that it had free parking for its customers).  Anyway at 1pm, we were allowed up into one of the rooms so that we could get changed and leave the bags before heading off to Wembley.  The room wasn't great, the toilet seat had a chunk missing out of it, the curtains were smaller than the windows, and the room just smelt stale.  But we weren't going to be put off and we set off to find the tube stop.  It was only at this point that I realised that I should have got myself one of those special badges that tells people you're pregnant, and then they (hopefully) give up their seat for you.  But it didn't matter as there was lots of choice.

Quarter of an hour later and we, and hundreds of other fans arrived at Wembley.  It was busy but not too crowded.  And we saw all sorts of things on our walk tot he stadium, people were dressed up as all sorts of different characters, priest, scooby doo, super heroes.  It was mad!  Anyway there wasn't a queue to get in and we were able to get some drinks and go straight to our seats.  Shortly afterwards, the two teams came out, and the game started.



Wigan Warriors scored quite early on, then towards the end of the first half Leeds went on to score.  They scored a try at one point which we thought really didn't deserve to be a try as they hadn't properly put the ball down over the line, but as we came to see throughout the match the ref seemed to be biased.

Leeds then scored twice in quick succession in the second half, and we were all quite tense until our team scored again.  There was one try in the second half that was obviously a proper try, but the ref watched the video play back about 5 times before he awarded it.  We were all getting really very cross with him!  Anyway this try brought our team well into the lead, which meant they went on to win the match!  It was all so exciting!  They let fireworks off at the end, and the team did a lap of the field.






I would go on to give details about our hotel room (which was just as bad as the first room) or the meal out that we had at Weatherspoons (which was just awful), but that would just spoil the experience of Wembley!

This was brought to you as part of Sian's Storytelling Sunday, albeit a few days late!

4 comments:

Jimjams said...

YAY for Wigan - DH supports them (from his armchair) and several family members are fanatical about attending the matches in person. Glad you had that result to crown the day and that the "bad" bits didn't spoil your day!

Sian said...

I've been thinking about you in the run-up to Storytelling Sunday, and wondering how you are doing. It's great to see that you are feeling fit enough to be enjoying a trip. How many weeks are you now?

Miriam said...

Sounds like an exciting day! Your pictures are gorgeous. Hope you are feeling well.

Lisa-Jane said...

I love going to rugby matches (we're from the south though so strictly a union girl!) I did go to one when I was newly pregnant and I was sat in the middle of the row so I asked to swap with some people on the end. They understood and I think they were grateful as I would have had to keep squeezing past them! Hope you are feeling really well.