By Staff Reporter

Last updated at 11:36, Saturday, 07 April 2012

The Downies took a shock victory last night in the first match of Workington’s 2012 Uppies and Downies series.

Lee Bowman hails the ball for the Downies

Weblink: For more photos and videos of the game, visit the News & Star's Facebook page

Numbers were sparse early on, with only about 300 people gathered at The Cloffocks 10 minutes before the 6.30pm start.

The ball was thrown off by Liam Boyd and quickly headed towards the river.

Although the Uppies managed to move it about 30 yards back up the town, by 7pm the game had hit its first stalemate. By 7.20pm Downies were congregating by the banks of the River Derwent, hoping to get hold of the ball and swim it to victory at the harbour.

A few big throws by players on both teams put paid to any chance of a quick end to the game, though, and the scrum spent the next hour and a half moving to and fro across the Cloffocks area and the players at the river retreated back to the scrum to help their teammates.

By 8.40pm the road was blocked with players and traffic was turning back to avoid queues.

Soon afterwards confusion began to reign as nobody was quite sure where the ball had gone but by 9pm the ball had reappeared.

At 9.30pm it looked like the Uppies were on their way to hail the ball but in a shock turn of events the game was won by the Downies after another round of confusion. The ball was hailed by Lee Bowman, 23, of Robinson Street.

Uppies had got it all the way to Workington Hall before passing it to Lee, who they thought was an Uppie, and he promptly took the ball to the dock and took the win for his team.

Uppies could be out in force on Tuesday to regain their pride and retain a chance of taking the series.

For more photos and videos of the game, visit the News & Star's Facebook page.

First published at 08:58, Saturday, 07 April 2012
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk