After initial reports that the Sheffield Oaks league game against Pontefract Pythons was called off due to water damage from the floods, Oaks Undercover can exclusively reveal this was a smoke screen dreamt up by the committee to save the club’s reputation in the face of pending legal action. It has transpired that the Myers Grove pitch has been  turned into a series of trenches when a find by a player lead local experts to believe it was a site of enormous historical importance.

 

Early in the week Sheffield Oaks’ Paul ‘Chick’ Leybourne had been metal detecting on the pitch and came across a rare silver coin. Chick explained, “I’ve been doing it at the start of every season since the mid nineties. During the first game of the 94 season a maul collapsed and I felt a sharp pain in my leg, looking closer at it I found  an old war metal sticking out of my calf. I couldn’t believe my luck. It’s now a bit of a tradition to do it at the start of the season.”

 

Chick alerted local historical societies, and as one thing lead to the next, Time Team were knocking on the door. The pitch was then excavated as Tony Robinson and a group of student archaeologists began looking for more artefacts that they believed were property of a local land owner who ruled the roost over Rivelin Valley. Robinson speculated this was probably one of the lords whom Robin Hood had stolen from before returning to his home in nearby Loxley.

 

The dig was going well when the Time Team crew suddenly withdrew following analysis of the silver coin found by Leybourne proved the piece to be less valuable than originally expected. Rather than being from the days of Robin Hood it was actually a faded commemorative coin from the 1992 European Championships in Sweden. A production company insider confirmed, “Although these were available for 50p each from ESSO garages it was an easy mistake to make, Graham Taylor is actually a spitting image of King Richard so the slightly faded image fooled us all. Unfortunately for Sheffield Oaks had it been Chris Waddle on the coin it would have been worth  a lot more and probably generated a bidding war amongst Wednesday fans.”

 

Despite this loss of potential income and damage to the pitch it was not all bad news for the S6 outfit. Leybourne was offered his own cookery show after wowing the crew with one of his signature dishes. Robinson quipped, “Pear quiche?  Now that's a cunning plan Baldrick would have been proud of.”