Aaron Lancaster brought the ball home for the Downies in Workington’s Easter traditional mass football game.
Uppies and Downies, which has no rules and no organiser, has been played in the town for hundreds of years.
The two sides of the town fight to get a specially made ball to a hailing point at Workington Hall for the Uppies or the Port of Workington for the Downies.
The first match in the series always takes place on Good Friday and 2022’s game looked like it was going up for some time.
There was very little movement in the scrum as it moved from the throwing off point, on the concrete bridge near Allerdale House, at just before 6.30pm.
The ball quickly went into the beck and spent a lot of time on Brow Top car park. At one point, it looked as though it was going up the steps to Brow Top or through the tunnel under it – which would have vastly tipped the game in the favour of the Uppies – but after going round in circles for a long time, the scrum was suddenly in the beck again.
A break away saw players lose the ball for a time and then at about 9.50pm, rumours began circulating that it was in the river.
At 10pm, Aaron Lancaster arrived at the port via the River Derwent and to cries of ‘You’ll never take the Derwent’ reached the hailing point and threw the ball in the air three times – meaning the Downies took the game.
Uppies have it all to play for at the next match, on Easter Tuesday, and the final game is on the following Saturday.
See our first gallery of photos here
To see photos from all the games we’ve covered since 2014, click here
