Last night we were French...

Its true, last night for a few hours we were French, and we reet enjoyed it :)

"Streets of Philidelphia" by Bruce Springsteen is playing on repeat while I write this, its 10pm in my kitchen and its dark and sleepy and "Philidelphia" is a superb song to have on loud in the background, sets the mood - and it was a terrific film too.

Anyway, what was that all about, French, eh ?

Les Catalans are the new boys in Superleague this year, based in Perpignan right down on the south coast of France they represent the whole of the Catalan region which ignores the border with Spain in the way that ancient kingdoms do, and stretches down as far as Barcelona, its a region with a unique flavour all of its own, a language that both the French Catalans and the Spanish Catalans share, food and wine of its own, we visited there last year and had a superb five days, can't wait to return in just three weeks time.

So, Les Catalans played their second game in superleague last night - last week they beat Wigan in France, this week they were playing away at Salford. Some say that Salford is a city in its own right, in truth its a shitty suburb of Greater Manchester and in the past their rugby team has clung onto superleague status like George Foreman clung onto Ali in the rumble in the jungle, but this year has started well for them and the very optomistic among the Salford fans are predicting a top six finish to the season and onto the playoffs, I don't do predictions but even I think they are talking crap.

Rugby League is a tough game, a masochistic idiot with few brains would do well to play the game, broken bones are two a penny, if you're lucky you'll come off the ground with less than 80% of your body covered in bruises, rib, shoulder and knee injuries are brushed off with nonchalance while the player completes the game, in short its tough, brutal, fast, very fast, with collisions every few seconds, its engrossing, addicitive and impossible to break eye contact with until the final whistle is blown - and its not to be mistaken for Rugby Union, its more pedestrian brother.

Last night was no different, two key positions in any RL team are scrum half and stand off, usually two of the smallest players on the park they are usually the ones who dictate the play and provide the passes to either their forwards or spread the play out to the wings, with a good number 6 and 7 you will always win games, and Les Catalans have signed the worlds best number 7, New Zealander Stacey Jones.

Now heres where it goes wrong - within ten minutes of the game started Stacey Jones left the field of play with a broken arm, which was bad news, but within minutes his half back partner Julian Rinaldi joined him with a dead leg, Les Cats hung onto the game and eventually lost 16-0, which was a hell of sight less than we'd thought after ten minutes.

How do I know all this ? Well I and some fine fellows made the trip over to Salford last night, took along some Catalan flags and claimed a small part of the terracing behind the goals for the Catalan cause, and we weren't the only ones, about 20 to 30 other folk had turned up from different superleague clubs to support Les Cats, being as their own supporters can't travel to every away game in the UK, they'll have a British supporters club instead.

Two barriers festooned with French and Catalan flags, and some bunting, were our domain and we played the part well, shouting insults to the referee and Salford team in our best, and quickly learnt French language, such good stuff as "l'arbitre est connard" (the referee enjoys masturbating) and "Qu'est que le fookin hell est vous ?" directed at the Salford mascot who appears to be an extremely camp Captain America-stylee masked good guy, he heard the question and looked very disgusted at us, he obviously understands basic French as well.

But the moment to savour from the evening was the big daft lad who Salford employ to walk around the ground with a huge cooler bag strapped to his back, selling bottles of beer. Rob, one of our travelling psuedo-French people stopped him and in very poor English asked "Monseiur, deux bierre s'il vous plait", eventually with hand signals making the boy understand that he wanted to purchase said beer.

The poor lad took the caps off the bottle and served the beer to Rob and then set about explaining that the cost would be five pounds, eventually showing five fingers and pointing to a ten pound note in Robs hand, we held our breath as we waited to see if we'd be scammed for a fiver but the lad was as good as gold and handed Rob his five pounds change at which Rob thanked him with "Cheers cocker".

It took several seconds for the beer boy to realise that "Cheers cocker" is not a native French phrase and he looked in astonishment as the gear wheels in his brain finally clicked into place and he asked "Your not from France are you" his face was a picture and I wish I'd taken one.

One more thing to mark the evening down in the museum of recollections - I managed to get my lip stuck in my zip, yes, my lip. I had a weatherproof jacket on with a storm collar that stand up in front of your face and makes you look like an arctic explorer and after I'd been to the toilet I zipped it right up, or almost right up, I actually zipped it as far as my top lip - it didn't half smart, and bleed, its perhaps one of the daftest things I've ever done, not the daftest, but its up there on the list.

Next week Les Cats play Castleford, or Hicksville as we prefer to call it, they shot the first half hour of the film "Deliverence" in Castleford and its got worse since, we are going to have fun with the locals next week...