Worcester Warriors 24
Ospreys 14
For the most part the lot of the average professional rugby thoroughbred is an enviable one.
They are, by and large, well remunerated for little more than playing a game and once a week their office transforms into a cauldron of humanity intent on adulating their physical prowess.
The rest of the time their workplace is a cross between a kindergarten and an old boys club, a heady cocktail of hijinks and exclusivity spiced up with a dash of a common purpose and various strengths of badinage.
When they are not 'at work', neither playing nor training, their pampered bodies are charged with little more than resting and being filled with chicken.
Some play the odd game of golf, others the X Box until their eyes bleed while the family men have plenty of valuable contact time with their children.
It all makes the horrendous ice baths, lung bursting conditioning, hours in the gym and regular long journeys well worthwhile.
And then there are days like Saturday when they are welcome to their lives.
Little to be gained from a dead rubber of a match, other than hypothermia, and a game that should be won against a spirited visiting side that refused to lie down. Played in Baltic temperatures and driving snow.
"It was so cold out there the boys couldn't feel their hands," said Worcester head coach Richard Hill.
"They couldn't tell whether they'd caught the ball unless they looked down to see if it was in their midriff." Most of the time they hadn't.
Just picture poor Ravai Fatiaki, a born and bred Fijian who only last week saw frost for the first time, shivering redundant in a wide channel barely able to see through the blizzard.
How long the novelty of his first snowfall lasted could be measured in milliseconds.
Outside him Josh Drauniniu, another Fijian, stood on the wing, never the best position in a Worcester team at the best of times.
He did outstandingly well to retain his interest and composure to score two tries especially as Tevita Taumoepeau's 'hamstring' injury after less than half an hour had the strategic look of a canny veteran.
"It looks like it's only a grade one tear," Hill noted wryly. "I am sure he will be alright for next week."
What pleased Hill was the way in which his side finally worked out the best way to play the conditions, one-out runners keeping the ball and going wide only when the room had been created out wide.
That is probably took a half-time talking to with the scores tied at 7-7 will have been less gratifying, half backs with as much experience as Shaun Perry and Andy Goode should have shaped that sort of game much earlier.
Once they realised the way forward lay straight ahead, Worcester steamrollered their relatively callow opponents.
Jake Abbott nudged his way over from the back of a driven maul and two sustained periods of forward dominance early in the second half created the room for Goode to put Drauniniu in at the corner flag.
At the final whistle they hurtled off knowing the job had been done, their LV Cup campaign completed and that the serious business of tending to their chilblains was finally nigh.
For one day only the life of a professional rugby player was not all it is cracked up to be.
WORCESTER: Arscott; Garvey, Fatiaki (Pennell 55), Rasmussen, Drauniniu; Goode A (Gray 69), Perry (Arr 57); Porter, Shervington (Lutui 55), Taumoepeau (Currie 26), Percival, Jones (Gillies 60), Betty (Muagututia 60), Abbott, Cowan. Replacement: Tomaszczyk
OSPREYS: Fussell; Dirksen, Isaacs (Fotuali'i 51), Parker, Walker; Morgan (Biggar 60), Webb (Habberfield 48); Griffiths (Jones 23), Baldwin (Davies 69), Rees (Taylor 69), Peers (O'Toole 60), Goode J, King, Lewis, Allen (Smith 48).
Referee: Ian Davies
