It was a pleasant hours drive downhill to Sussex on Saturday, through some ominous showers of rain but emerging into the sunshine and finishing at the ever-welcoming field of Burgess Hill RFC. As our contingent arrived we began the assembly of the stately pleasure dome that is the team gazebo, kindly donated by Mike S. Despite mostly ignoring his instructions and luckily being sufficiently far from Porlock, the gazebo rose majestically above the field and undoubtedly secured us the "best tent" award of the day. We settled in for a day of rugby but unfortunately without some absent friends. We had to be merry without Mary, substitute Pana-tony for Tony (thanks Teri!) and tragically deprive Sarah from Burgess Hill of her dancing buddy Kevin. We did however have a suitable team mascot in the form of Humphrey the very shaggy dog.

Looking enviously on were our tent-neighbours Reigate - not only of our gazebo, it turned out. Having come along woefully unprepared, they begged the loan of one of our practice balls. Our generous sharing of said ball turned out to be a fatal mistake - see later. Equally unprepared was the writer of this report - as you will have noticed by now this is a bit light on the actual rugby as insufficient notes were taken. Four games were played, with us winning one of our three group games and then unfortunately coming up short in the Plate semi. All of the games were close and we scored in all of them, with some great attacking rugby and periods of solid defence. The Sussex referees are slightly different to what we are used to, but overall we can have no complaints and come away with some areas to work on. It is likely we'd have scored several extra tries if we'd been more aware of being in the final metre.

Gaps between the games were filled by resting in our magnificent gazebo, sampling the BBQ provided by Burgess Hill and scoffing the huge variety of snacks we collectively brought along. It was during one of these interludes that one of our Reigate rivals pointed out that all the women on our team were outside and all the men inside - to be told that the tent was "full of stinky boys". Well girls, if we're resorting to that level of primary school playground insult, all I can say is watch out for frogs in your lunchboxes and your pigtails being pulled, next time around!

The day came to a close with us watching the Cup final, won on "Golden try" by none other than Reigate - undoubtedly spurred on by their practice sessions with the magic Wimbledon ball. Next time we'll make sure to bring an especially crappy deflated one for them. The entire field emptied as a deluge swept across south Sussex, everyone crowding into the Burgess Hill clubhouse. I'm sorry to report that our luck continued into the raffle draw, with not a single raffle prize coming to our table. Very dodgy drawing from the home side, I reckon. It was particularly poignant to see the look of dismay from both Jo and Lisa as the bottle of Gavi went to another team. Overall a great day out and a very enjoyable first festival for some of us.