RIPON Rugby Club took on the Champions Of The World on Tuesday and both won.

“Tonight is a couple of firsts for us,” said front-man Danny George Wilson. “It’s the first time we’ve ever played in Ripon and I think it’s the first time we’ve ever done a rugby club.”

Cue jocular references to Deep Heat, sharing a bath afterwards and rugby clubs loving a sing-song as Wilson, an Aussie long resident in the UK but steeped in American country rock, blues, folk and soul, warmed to his new surroundings.

After six albums with Grand Drive, a solo record and now four albums with the Champs in a near 20-year career, Wilson had the swagger and the banter to perform amid the familiar clubhouse décor of wall-mounted rugby shirts, photographs and tour memorabilia and the equally familiar sight of regular trips to the bar for beer re-fuelling.

Wilson has slipped under the commercial radar all these years, but those in the know – and The Press has championed him ever since he set off on his Grand Drive – have enjoyed his consistently melodic albums that so suit the bar room.

Wilson evoked both Dylan in his nasal vocals and Springsteen in his extended rock-outs, especially when the enigmatic Free Jazz Geoff blew his rampant sax in Clarence Clemons style, in songs for the good times and the bad times.

New album Stay True provided plenty of the night’s highlights, especially Stop Thief! and Other Days, but nothing topped the Southern-fried boogie of 2009’s Restless Feet, up there with Lynyrd Skynyrd’s best.

A victorious night all round.