TWO Warrington men will be playing Test matches in New Zealand and Australia as part of a history-making Great Britain Masters rugby league team tour.

Pete McGuinness and Dave Reid, who are members of the Crosfields Masters side, will meet up with the national team in Auckland on Sunday.

The tour, which will also see the GB party watching Rugby League World Cup action, features six matches in total and is described by Halewood Jaguar operations manager McGuinness as the ‘trip of a lifetime’.

This is their second tour, Great Britain Masters’ third since 2009 but the first that takes in New Zealand and an inaugural clash with the Kiwis.

McGuinness, 64, from Appleton, said: “Dave and I are joining up with the Great Britain Masters side for six games Down Under.

“There’ll be two Test matches, one against the Kiwis, and the following week one against the old enemies, the Aussies.

“The tour is organised around the World Cup. We’re going to the semi final in Auckland and we’ll be in Brisbane for the final, where we’re hoping we may even see an England side playing.

“It’s going to be all good stuff and I’m really looking forward to it.”

They had a surprise in store on the last trip.

“We were touring over there with the Great Britain Masters in 2015 and when we played a Test match against the Australians fortunately, or unfortunately, we came up against one certain Robert Jackson, one of the Warrington legends of all time. We had a great day that day,” said McGuinness.

Warrington Guardian:

“It’s the trip of a lifetime. Basically, Masters is all about the social side of the game. And the social side involves a lot of people having a lot of fun, making good friends, keeping the friends for a lifetime and hopefully revisiting them sometime in the future.

“To be still doing this at Masters level, at our age, is absolutely brilliant.”

The pair head south on the back of Crosfields Masters’ victory in last month’s Latchford Albion Nines, an event which 54-year-old Reid, an HGV mechanic for Royal Mail, helped to organise.

The first match of the trip against the Kiwis will come at the culmination of the New Zealand Masters Festival in Rotorua on Thursday, November 23.

Following the World Cup semi-final at Mount Smart Stadium in Auckland on Saturday, November 25, the tourists will fly to Sydney and face Australia on the same day at Cabramatta.

Matches will follow on the Central Coast on Tuesday, November 28, against the local Bulldogs side and then Toukley Masters.

Two days later they will head north to Brisbane where on Friday, December 1, they will have matches against Brisbane Old Boys, Pine River Masters and a New South Wales all-comers side that will include players from Appin Dogs, Hills Bulls, Mittagong Lions and Cumberland Crusaders.

After attending the World Cup Final at Suncorp Stadium the following day, the tourists will be heading home.

Prop forward McGuinness, who has a playing history with the now defunct Thames Board as well as Leigh Miners, enjoys a key role as a tourist.

He has compiled a 36-page tour brochure, while the man nicknamed ‘The Judge’ will be head of the kangaroo court, dishing out forfeits and punishments to 32 fellow tourists from across the country as deemed necessary.

“To be still involved in a team sport like Masters, as we all get a little more mature, is something that the majority of people thought that they would never be involved with and it is something that money can‘t buy,” writes McGuinness in the brochure.

“Who would have thought that at this stage of our lives we would still be looking forward to the next game, still striving for representative honours, that we would have a great post-match social life.

“How many of us following a game wake up the morning after feeling fit or not for work and wondering whether it was the aches and pains or the hangover that was worse.

“The greatest feeling coming away from this tour should be that it was worth every penny and more, that we have cemented existing relationships and made new friends.”

All Masters games, for players over 35, end in a draw, with the emphasis being on sportsmanship, showing old skills and just enjoying the opportunity to still play rugby league.