The day before what some like to call Game Day; I was going to enlighten your afternoon with an in depth breakdown of the Bees side to face Driffield on the morrow, but as soon as I saw a team sheet which begins with Prosecuting Counsel, Roger Raper QC, listed at number 1, I thought I should watch what I say lest I incur the wrath of Rog. Obviously Roger isn’t really a Queens Council, but he probably likes a glass of sherry.

Hugging up next to the sagacious RR, we find young Andy Smith, with Ryan Wederell completing the front row, it is good to see so many young faces breaking through into our squad.

Like I said in my introduction, I thought better of any in depth analysis of the line up as it is only game four and I don’t want to be giving away anything to Driffield which might be seen to be revealing anything from our game plan. Not that I know anything about our game plan, and indeed all I have is this quote from Dwight D Eisenhower “ In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable”. I am sure that is tremendously deep, but I am not sure what it means.

I have been trying unearth any public record of when we last played Driffield. My initial “Google” to find the answer threw up a second team fixture from October 22nd 2012, and the second led me to the Powergen table for the 2003/04 season, for North One, which the Bees won.

That season we topped the league having won 20 of 22 games, lost one and drawn 1. Driffield finished 10th, having won 5 and lost 17. We beat Driffield 82-29 here at Wagon Lane on September 13 2003 and took the spoils 36-3 over at Driffield on Saturday 28th February 2004.

This has absolutely no bearing on our fixture tomorrow, but it does allow me to wallow in some nostalgia. One huge reason for our success that season comes in the rather ominous figure of one Christopher Hala’uifa who terrorised all of us and the opposition that season, making 18 appearances in the 22 league games, scoring 27 tries in the process.

Looking through the squad that season, the starting props were a certain R Kelly, the well-known RnB legend and also now our forwards coach and Peter “Tilt” Hall. The hooking duties were split between Peter Scott and Leon Treco. The second row was perm any two from three of Rob Woodhead, Baz Clarke and Richard Hughes.

The back row was the aforementioned “Loofa” partnering Ian Judson at 6, and either Mark Thomas or Jonny Tu’amoleloa (Jonny Unpronounceable to the faithful). Mark Heap also made 10 starts in various positions in the pack.

Our Scrum half was the irreplaceable and unstoppable Joey Nau. Outside him, we used three fly halves – Tom Rhodes, Richard “t-shirt” Petyt and Dave Harvey, possibly the weakest line up of number 10s the club has ever fielded. I think not, he added quickly.

The centres were largely Stuart Dixon and Phil Greaves, although Rob Padgett featured a few times as did Steve Brimacombe. On the flanks we tended to play Joe “Flash” Simpson and Pete Sutcliffe although JP Rimington got in the mix as did Asa Firth and one Tevita Vaikona.

All in all not a bad squad, eh?...which rattled in 975 points in the 22 games, conceding 366. The game we lost was at Sheffield on Saturday 29 November 2003, in which we were whooped 25-24. The draw was also against Sheffield, 17 points apiece here at The Hive on Saturday 10th April – the week after we had won the Powergen Intermediate Cup.

Oh that’s enough nostalgia. Game face and mascara on.

See you at the game tomorrow.

Pip Pip

Scoop.