The boy’s close encounter with the 97th Archbish of York, John Tucker Mugabi Sentamu, last Saturday guaranteed a packed house for the Sunday Sermon at the Chip n Ern this week, where the subject also loosely rugby related. This week’s sermon, delivered as ever by the Reverend Dave, asked the question, Was Mary Magdelene really the hooker in Jesus’s First XV? Dave had no sooner reached his pulpit than the Mild ran out, so he had to change the barrel, which rather ruined the moment.

Looking back to last week, I noticed that our nearest (and possibly only) rivals for the Yorkshire One crown just squeaked a win by summarily battering Old Brods into submission up on the Malton Bayou. The Malton match report was almost apologetic about the style of play which gained them victory, blaming the poor weather for the lack of ambition. However, me, you and the donkey we rode in on know this to be a fib, as there is not a chance the fat lads up at the front are going to let anyone with a shirt with double figures on it see the ball until the clocks go forward.

The Big Aussie lad in their pack has a pouch in his shirt and calls the ball Joey.

I am here to be proved wrong and I look forward to the ball been chucked out wide with gay or even heterosexual abandon next week when we visit the damp patch just off the A64. Or the Gannock as they prefer to style it.

So, we got back into action last week and saw off the attentions of the Brid boys for the third time this season. There is no doubting they are a good side and a top set of chaps to boot, but it looks like another season in Y1 for the Cod Worriers.

We are back on home turf tomorrow, and as sometimes happens when we get particularly frisky at that end of Bingley, just to get us revved up for the weekend, we sat down at the Hive this week to watch the grass grow. Like the Malton boys were frustrated in our attempts as the wind and rain gave us few options, other than to stare blankly.

However, three or four hours of solid Yorkshire drudgery, watching the greensward turn to swamp soon had the Malton game plan burned deep into our brows. However, just to make sure, we sat in the dug-out a tad longer hoping a plank might warp, as the water continued to creep from the Saltaire end and started to threaten flood number four of the winter.

It appeared that resistance was futile, like eating soup with a fork, so we downed our imaginary tools and in that very British way of dealing with a crisis, went to the pub.

Luckily, Thursday night in the Fox and Gynaecologist has become Debating Society night for a good few years now, so we took our seats in the Tap Room to watch the fireworks begin. Unfortunately, it’s another case of health and safety gone mad, but I have to admit that the arm restraints and plastic glasses have kept injuries to a minimum of late. Still, the attendant Saint John’s Ambulance crew are usually kept busy when the girls tire of reasoned debate and get properly stuck into an argument.

The subject of this week’s debate was to be whether it is preferable to have a heart the size of Liverpool or a liver the size of Hartlepool and the guest referee was to be the Bees’ own Martin Whitcombe. When the Big Man finally bounded through the door, there was a sudden hush as the debaters waited for the balloon to go up on MW’s signal.

MW seemed particularly animated once he had let battle commence, and shuffled across to be amongst his people at the soggy end of the bar. MW reached inside his trench coat and unfurled a package on the bar. There, in the familiar hand of the Tap Room Communist, was a manuscript, outlining a Revolutionary way of playing the great game of Rugby Football.

MW said he was always open to new ideas and ways of confounding the opposition. We had been sussed out as one dimensional set of Orcs who could only bang it up the middle, early in the season, having been given a lesson in the finer arts by Salem, so had worked under the cover of darkness to become a set of willy nilly chuck it abouters, but surely we would be similarly unmasked by February, so we now needed a third dimension.

Before he was lost in the flood, it seems the Tap Room Communist had spent many seasons watching us from his solitary garret on the tip top and had prepared a Marxist/Leninist strategy for taking The Bees to another level. Perhaps a Marxist/Leninist approach might be our saving?

So we opened up the Tap Room Communists scroll. His initial analysis that the forwards, The Proletariat, should control the means of production made some sense when looking at scrums and lineouts, however his suggestion that lineout calls must be ratified at a monthly meeting of the Supreme Soviet, rather lost the concept of a forty minute half. However, where he really went off the beaten track was his assertion that the inevitable downfall of the Bourgeoisie, as he saw the three quarters, rather left a gaping hole in the side after numbers 9 through 15 were sent to a Gulag at half time following their counter revolutionary shows of individual flair.

So if we are not finding a way forward in Revolutionary Communism perhaps this week I will again be hoping and praying with my bed slanted up the hill to Heaton that the Salem sorts might help us out this weekend and slap M+N right up the Mary Jane or at least restrict them to four points.

I must dash.