HI, it’s Luke here.

First of all, I’d like to say a massive ‘thank you’ to all those who made the trip to the South of France.

We were obviously gutted not to get the win, but it was again a very eventful trip.

For starters, Dale Ferguson (pictured below) likes to think of himself as a fairly educated individual.

But last week’s trip to Catalan Dragons has blown that one right out of the water.

Nobody can question his playing ability and, after a frustrating start to the season due to injury, it’s great to see him hitting such excellent form. A man-of-the-mach performance in the last round of the Cup against Swinton and praise from Browny for his efforts against the Dragons were thoroughly deserved.

Yet his credibility took a nosedive as soon as we arrived on foreign soil.

This year, we flew in to Barcelona and were then bussed straight up to Perpignan to prepare for the game.

Barcelona is obviously in Spain – although clearly not according to Fergy!

As soon as we stepped off the plane, our in-form forward was saying ‘bonjour’ and ‘merci’ to all the airport staff he encountered. He was clearly proud to be conversing with all the natives, who he obviously thought were French.

No doubt he was trying to come across as being clever to his teammates, but instead he just made himself look stupid. The Helmet award was in the bag.

And what a relief that must have been to Scotty Moore who missed out on becoming the first Giants player to secure a hat trick of helmet wins.

As a member of our 19-man squad, Scotty obviously joined us on our trip to the South of France and clearly wanted to find some way of celebrating the fact he’d be handing the Helmet shirt over to someone else. The various ice cream sellers in the Perpignan region duly obliged.

Although our ‘stocky’ new arrival has been working tremendously hard on his fitness under head conditioner Greg Brown (GB), Scotty just can’t resist the odd ice cream or 10.

He seems to be on first-name terms with every seller in town, and every time GB’s back was turned Scotty appeared to be sampling another flavour.

As a result, I think GB was a little shocked with the shape Scotty was in when he returned from France. He wasn’t exactly back to square one, but I think it was pretty close.

In contrast, someone who probably shed a few pounds while we were out there was Scott Grix.

And nervous energy will definitely have been the reason for that.

During our three-night stay, Grixy had the ‘pleasure’ of sharing a room with Kev Brown, which he clearly thought wouldn’t present a problem.

But on the first night, Grixy discovered Kev is sometimes prone to be a bit of sleep walking – something he found out when our captain decided he wanted to swap beds in the middle of the night!

Not surprisingly, Grixy was rather alarmed and forcefully shoved Kev back onto his own territory, without him waking up once.

As a result, Grixy spent the next two nights absolutely petrified wondering what might happen next. It wasn’t a good time for him at all, and to say he was glad to return home in one piece was an understatement!