Well, it was a frosty snowy scene that greeted the Canaries as they ran out of the Kenilworth Road tunnel on Saturday, all wearing their ear-muffs, gloves (with thermal pad inserts), scarves, thermal vests and longjohns.

Well, it was a frosty snowy scene that greeted the Canaries as they ran out of the Kenilworth Road tunnel on Saturday, all wearing their ear-muffs, gloves (with thermal pad inserts), scarves, thermal vests and longjohns. More fool the Luton lads as they appeared in their usual short-sleeved shirts and summer-weight shorts, faces as blue as a cup final between Everton and Chelsea!

The assembled media of course were full of praise for the robustness of the hosts and damning of the visitors, words such as 'wimps' and 'namby-pamby being amongst the most printable here. As the referee Jack Frost blew his whistle to commence proceedings spectators could not believe their eyes as the entire City back four of Shackell, Colin, Dublin and Lappin started putting their gloves to good use making snowballs which, when about as large as one of Mike Newell's controversial statements, were lobbed back to keeper David Marshall, firstly as keeping practice (all the action being thus far in the opposition half of course!) but primarily so that he could use his giant goalie's gloves to mould them into a large body shape on his goalline.

Meanwhile at the other end Chris Brown went very close with a icy sharp header as the lads continued to skate rings around the Hatters and make those previously-blue faces red with the effort of the sheer huff and puff of matters.

As Darren Huckerby dazzled the City faithful with his triple salchow, followed by a double loop as he glided into the box, the rearguard were still occupied moulding many more but smaller spheres from the laying snow, with the intention of manufacturing a head, and making Marshall between the sticks leap around like Superman with his kryptonite in overdrive as they threw them in for moulding together!

In the Luton area things were hotting up as the frozen pitch began to thaw beneath City's relentless onslaught, not to mention the heat from their longjohns every time someone was brought down by an apparently bloodless home leg covered in goosebumps. After fifteen minutes of siege warfare and possession - figures of 3% (home) to 97% (away) - finally the beleaguered home players managed to prise the ball away from the rampant visitors as they ventured into enemy territory for the very first time with no completed head yet on the goalline snowman.

A nifty slide down the right wing by Matthew Spring saw the ball gather over two inches of unused snow in Simon Lappin's patrol zone before being scooped up into the air and crossed into the City box where, on the end of a pretty inept header from former Tractor Boy Sam Parkin, it landed fairly and squarely on the shoulders of an already scarfed snow torso to the left side of City's goalline, thus City's new 6'9” defender Snowy Frost (no relation to the ref - honest!) marked his debut by keeping Luton's strikers at bay as the freeze frame confirmed that indeed the 'ball' had not come anywhere near to crossing the line.

Marshall then removed the head from City's most short-lived hero and launched it upfield where it duly hit Hatters defender Russell Perrett in the face, knocking him out cold and enabling Dion Dublin to slither way past the halfway line and on to the loose ball before doing a deft triple flip in front of keeper Marlon Beresford and slotting the by now de-snowed ball into the roof of the Luton net.

The travelling supporters went wild with joy while each gloved and scarfed player to a man ran the full length of the pitch to hug the frozen torso next to David Marshall, little realising that in showing their love and appreciation they created the shortest Canary career in history for within just a few short minutes Snowy was reduced to a pile of water.And there my Canary friends is the story of what really happened as City beat Luton Town by a single goal on a frozen pitch with snow laying on top of it.