By Charlotte Coldrey
January 20 2004

I put on my Geezer trousers and my 4 layers on and set off to the Stoop, collected my friend Kristen and her Dad Pete. We all had a sing song in the car, singing “Mighty Quinn” and “We Love You Burkey” which was a laugh Mum and I were a bit upset because Ash and Auntie Zoe weren’t in the car with us :-( (but it was fun all the same :-) ), the CD was so filthy after its trip to France that it kept on jumping. We got to the ground and met up with my friend Lara and her brothers Alex and Greg but there was a sudden panic when Dad said he’d lost his wallet (surprise surprise)! He went back to the car twice and managed to find it the second time! So I could get a programme to add to my collection! I keep waiting for Pat to be in the poster in the middle.

While Ash and I were in the queue, a man behind us said:
”You’re Charlotte and Ashley aren’t you?”
“Yeah” we both replied, looking a bit puzzled as we both had never seen this man in our lives!
“I saw your picture on the Come All Within website!” he said to us because I think he saw our puzzled reaction! We were both pretty chuffed about that!

The game began and I cheered really loud which didn’t feel quite the same as when I did in France! After about 5 minutes through the game I suddenly heard a shout of ”Hi Ace!” and then Dad pointed out Ace walking up to one of the seats behind us and I thought that Ace wasn’t playing! But he was going to sit down near us! So I sat and watched the match which wasn’t our best to start with. In the freezing wind we took a long time to get going. I thought that Montauban played a lot better than they had done last week, but thankfully we started to play a bit more like last week and we scored some great tries, my favourite was the one by James Hayter.

At half time I met up with Ash and told him that Ace was sitting by us (as Ace is Ash’s favourite player)! We went into the bar to buy a hot dog but as we got to the front the buns had all gone! So we went back to our seats as the match had already restarted.
I was very shocked at the head bang with Gavin Duffy and a French player and I was so surprised that he managed to get back up again (he deserved man of the match).The match got to an end and I was disappointed that we couldn’t go on the pitch!

We went into the colours bar as we weren’t usually allowed to and Ace was in there with his family. His children are really cute! Ashley asked for his autograph and got to hold his beer! Guess who else was there - yup it was Pat!!! So Ash asked for his autograph and asked how his dislocated finger was from last week, thankfully it’s on the mend.

Brive are next week, I can’t wait.