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Match Report: Tuesday 11th September - Almonds v Stokers |
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Match Report – Tuesday 11th September
Dear Absentee Craptain,
They say that familiarity breeds contempt: well, there was a lot of breeding contempt going on Tuesday evening…
Our Acting Up Craptain did his credibility no favours by calling an AGM at 7pm only to find out when we all got there that the Club doesn’t actually open until 7.30pm, although outrage was diverted to Conspiracy Pete when he turned up and said he’d known the Club wouldn’t be open but hadn’t thought to share that little gem of information with anyone else. It was quite pleasant stood outside chatting about this, that & the other as we slowly gathered to a crowd, but we were obviously making the place look untidy because the barman came out and told us we could go and sit inside after 15 minutes, although we had to sit in the bar and be oh! so tantalising close to alcohol & not have a drink until the official opening time. If you can cast your mind back as far as two years ago (we are still smarting from missing out on the opportunity to rip the **** last year) you may remember the total disregard & lack of respect proffered to the poor sod trying to call the AGM to order? Well, Compact got a large dose of that… he raised all the appropriate points of order and the rest of us shot them all down in flames one by one – you would have been proud!! Pete got us all thoroughly over-excited with his Financial Report and our £40 profit margin: there was some talk of a team night out, but when it became apparent ‘abroad’ was not an option and a divide existed between those ready to settle for a right royal piss up on a pub crawl & others who thought a meal & a couple of bitter lemons would be good, the mood was lost – Secretary Sue, aided & abetted by Assistant Jen, will possibly make an Executive decision idc.
When Pete said that ever since its conception subs had always been a pound, Chris suggested raising it to £1.50 – we said no. When Pete said the duck money had made up for most of our profit, Chris suggested that we raise the duck forfeit to 20p to focus the mind on avoiding them – we said no. When Pete said that our biggest expense was paying the sticker-up, Chris suggested we offer the job as a franchise – we said, “what the f*** are you talking about now?” Actually, that last bit was a lie, but it would have been quite funny… After half an hour’s in depth discussion about every skittling aspect possible, including Chris’ suggestions that a) everyone take a turn at Captaining the team in your absence, or b) he Captained the team until we lose, then someone else takes over, to which we replied “on your bike” & “eff off” respectively, nothing had changed except for us having a new sticker up: Robyn has decided she’s too good for us, so sent us her younger brother as a peace offering – we’re not sure at this point whether Dan really wants the job, so it is a possibility we may have to find ourselves a new one. Rich was thinking of mentioning it to Lisa, but decided to keep it in mind for himself, pending further strike action by the PO.
Exhausted by our efforts to get involved any more than we had to, we then adjourned to the alley for the evening’s main event, our home match against the Stokers – or Stockers, as the Welsh apparently prefer to pronounce it!! Taffy had taken it upon himself to produce a ‘wallet sized’ version of the skittles fixtures – smaller font size for the youthful who can still see little things, & a nice big breeder for those of us needing binoculars to view anything undersized! You can probably imagine just how grateful his fellow Almonds were: everyone took one, but couldn’t let on it was a good idea so Taffy’s efforts got rinsed & general consensus was he has waaaaaaaaayyyyy too much time on his hands!!
As if the AGM hadn’t been punishment enough, Compact was faced with a further test of character at the outset of the match - too many players wanting to play first: he got busy maintaining that it’s the quality of players that go on first that sets up a match, trying to infer he’d carefully selected MiniDisk & aRCe as 1st pair rather than because they were the ones he had to play because they wanted to go home quick! Unfortunately for him, we’d all witnessed aRCe’s insubordination rant, the gist of which was either he played first or he was going home anyway!, (no-one wants to argue with him at the moment – the anger management hasn’t kicked in yet even if his desire to kick anything in his path has, the nicotine patches appearing not to be large enough to cope with his stature), & Compact coercing Lodge & Turk into hanging on to play 2nd pair so that he could indulge his own flesh & blood in playing & leaving as early as possible – no nepotism there then!
And so finally the game got underway, & it all looked quite promising for quarter of an hour or so. It was quite a shock that anyone had taken any notice of anything that Compact had said during the AGM, but we had Lodge taking a turn at the board, even though he did need some help with the sums – you never know, maybe one night the Young Guns might be encouraged to stay beyond 2nd pair to support the Old Gits, as also suggested by Compact!! Barnesy jinxed MiniDisk’s assault on a 30 by drawing everyone’s attention to the fact he was after a stroke of Pussy, our Secretary having taken great pains to explain the purpose of Pussy to him during the AGM: MiniDisk promptly dished up a duck on his final up to walk away with 25, whilst aRCe followed up his rear with a 15. They put us 10 ahead of the Stokers & full of confidence Compact turned Lodge & Turk loose to see what damage they could do. It could have been worse… the Stokers’ could have scored 30s! As it was, Lodge was relieved to miss a Slimbridge by a whisker, scoring 1 pin whilst his mate Turk pipped MiniDisk by that many to finish on 26. Our lead lost & now 7 pins behind, Compact played Barnesy Junior & Wiggle.
Whilst we had hoped for a WPTP & The Clap, all we got was a disappointed shake of the head from Vice Compact as BJ finished on 20 & Wiggle 21. We narrowly missed turning the game back round by 1 pin, putting the Almonds 8 behind as Compact then unleashed peRV & Jocky. Our 4th pair’s scores mirrored their opponents in perfect symmetry, (NB: they wuz the same…) 29 for peRV & 7 for Jocky: whilst Jocky’s score might not be considered very high, it has to be observed that his 2nd duck was of the more classy variety – he would probably have scored more, but he got all flustered when he realised he was in danger of scoring double figures after getting a 2 on his 5th up to add to the 5 he got on his 3rd, putting him on 7 as he went into his last! For those who need the obvious stating, this meant we were still 8 behind…
With Hammer AWOL, believed to be recovering after throwing himself into his cess pond & having to call the RNLI out to rescue him after last week’s sorry 13, Compact saved Sparky up for ‘anker & put Orical & himself on next. Once again the Stokers saved us from ourselves by not hitting us with 2 high scorers: Orical, happily not burned out after his turn on the chalks – a sight which Compact was all for saving for prosperity on celluloid, or at least a mobile phone, but no-one obliged him in for fear of repercussion, or similar treatment – slogged his way to 24, whilst Compact did even worse than last week & didn’t even get into double figures: 9 was all he had on offer. You never know, he might have found a novel way of making his troops feel superior by pretending to be crap, but it’s not really leading from the front is it?! As he was probably more bothered by it than us - always up for a smirk at his expense as we are - we let is pass without too much comment.
We only dropped 1 more pin, so it was still there for the winning by our ‘ankers Sparky & Conspiracy Pete. They kept the competition friendly by scoring 25 each, but allowed the Stokers to sneak another 3 pins ahead so that they took victory by a neat 12. It was quite a close game in the end really, us Almonds just missing a few pins each which would have made all the difference – but then the same could be said of any game you lose! Barnesy remarked that Dan ran out of steam and looked really tired by the end of the evening, but I think the same could be said of us all – it felt like a long night, one that was never going to end, but we eventually got to wend our weary way homeward.
We have 2 weeks to regroup & rest up, there being no game this week as there is no No.16 in existence: our next match takes place Monday 24/9 at Patchway Sports & Social Club against the Patchwegians. Conspiracy Pete says that he will be posting the averages after that 3rd game has taken place, although some more cynical Almonds were of the opinion that will only happen when Pete is at the top…
Yours Respectfully, (almost - where the hell is my 2007/08 Match Reports tab?!!)
Match Reporter signing off  (to make you feel more at home!!)
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