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Match Report: Weds 5th September - Artists v Almonds |
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Once upon a time there was a like-minded group of people who shared a common interest – knocking a ball about the football pitch at Almondsbury Sports & Sorial Club. During a rowdy after-match celebration they came up with a brilliant idea: how about knocking some wooden pins about with a ball, or even 3, & call themselves the most awesomely imaginative name possible? A bit nutty, but so The Almonds skittles team was born. Down the years skittlers have come & gone, a variety of characters taking the helm of a ship sailing in sometimes turbulent but always invigorating waters – except maybe when one Treasurer buggered off with the moolah.
The latest incarnation of The Almonds is possibly a more disparate group of people, who gather together for the crack, glorying in humiliation, ridicule & talking bollocks rather than a chance to shine in the spotlight of stardom: we save that for when we open our fridges. But everyone has their place, & although we might not be the best skittling team that ever lived, we are happy to be the best looking skittling team that ever lived – even if our Secretary is currently letting us down a little with her bruised features: as she sustained her injuries rugby tackling the present Treasurer to prevent him running off with our duck money, we’ll magnanimously forgive her.
Barely before the start of the new 2007-08 season was a twinkle in an Almond’s eye we learned that our present Craptain, The Silver Fox, was taking a 3-month sabbatical to set up a new brothel in Russia, or similar, leaving the crew of the Good Ship Almond to list haphazardly through choppy waters at the start of their latest voyage into the unknown. Stoical to the last, most of us turned up for our first game of the season on Wednesday 5th September anyway, to be manhandled through our away match against the Artists by none other than VC Compact himself – Jocky & Minidisk saving themselves for now!
Do we have a changed & matured CD, who put names on the board & coached his team through with minimum fuss & no sarcasm – a grown up Craptain to whom we can turn for inspiration & reassurance? Probably it was just an off night & he was caught off guard by forgetting Winter Skittles starts at 8pm, not 8.30pm like Summer Skittles… & I think he forgot it was front pin first too, going by his score. Not to worry, normal service will be resumed in due course for sure.
Young Guns Turk & Lodge showed initiative – or arrogance of yoof in assuming they would be chosen to play! - & put their names up on the board first whilst VC Compact collected his thoughts, & his beer. Both had their Ladies in attendance, which inspired Turk more than it appeared to Lodge: Turk took 23 out, taking 2 captives, whilst Lodge couldn’t find his form to do more damage than 9, letting 15 little buggers escape to leave us an unlucky 13 down on the first pair.
Taffy was next up with Orical, & in harmony after their conversation about holidays & villas in Florida, they put in a steady performance to recapture 8 pins between them (TB 2 & JL 6) by scoring 18 & 23 respectively & leaving only 5 loose still. Watching the game’s progress & becoming increasingly daunted at the prospect of hitting front first, Wiggle cheered up considerably when she did a headcount & realised VC could play an All Boys team: unfortunately she cannot count beyond the digits of both hands, & even though she took the number of players for a Summer team & added 2, it still didn’t come out to the equation she was going for: not necessary to play!
Cheering Taffy up considerably after his own moderate scoring stint on the alley by spitting out “bollocks” in acknowledgement of VC’s direction that not only was she required to play but up next, Wiggle bit the bullet & took up 3rd pair with aRCe. Pleasantly surprised to hit anything at all, JeL racked up 22 pins before the wheels fell off: already visioning the applause of the crowd, the warm glow of satisfaction of being the first Almond to score 30 this season & being top of the averages to boot, Wiggle tried too hard on her final up & blew it at the last, taking away a duck instead – which felt a bit like the final moments of her victorious game to take the Ladies Pairs title at Summer Skittles, only she did manage a scattering of pins with the last ball on that occasion… Not wanting to be a bad sport & insist on an examination of whether the front pin was exactly on its spot after failing to hit the bastard by a hair’s breadth with her 2nd ball, Wiggle swallowed the bitter taste of failure & drew comfort from the recapture of a further 4 pins. aRCe meanwhile had expended far too much energy in his verbal attacks on Barnesy & Hammer, or maybe he just lost the will to live after listening to the saga of The Pond in the Garden Across the Road, the thought of those 300+ fishes swimming about without the aid of goggles or scuba gear in their cesspit of a pond too much for our kind-hearted Mr Angry to bear: either way, he just couldn’t control his eye, hand & ball co-ordination enough to do more than get One Fat Lady up on the board - even though VC had bestowed him the honour of playing with Wiggle; obviously she don’t float his boat!
Having only allowed 1 other pin to escape our net, at 6 down it was all to play for & VC decided peRV & he were the men to do it. There was some disgruntlement about nepotism, namely VC keeping his pairing with peRV intact from Summer Skittles but ripping asunder Orical & aRCe, but things settled down after Compact’s sensitive handling of the situation – he told them it was because they played crap all summer – & Compact & peRV’s scores proved to be nothing to write home about.
To hear peRV banging on about his 2 top scores of 39 at Summer Skittles - which had set him off dreaming about taking up a new career as Technical Instruction ‘Trainer (or TIT for short) for under-performing skittlers, until he played his next game & was shite - you wouldn’t have thought you were watching the same bloke struggling to get 14 on the board. There were quite a few occasions when he hung his head in shame during the summer for the spawny-git way he took some pins but had them counted anyway, & that was one consistency in his performance on Wednesday! Compact probably had too much on his mind to focus adequately on scoring pins: what with still being on summer time, deciding on who to play when & swatting off attacks on his integrity, organising our AGM as well as pondering the whole issue of how many fish make a pond & the disadvantages of not having a garden at the end of your house… He must have been laughing up his sleeve when the Artists they played against got 9 apiece, enabling him & peRV to claim credit for ‘turning the game around’, even though Compact’s 12 was hardly worthy of an Almond Craptain.
With the 6 recovered pins & a couple of extras taken prisoner, Sparky & Hammer only had the pressure of extending our lead from 2 on their shoulders, not chasing around after rogue runners – beep beep. Sparky bore the brunt of the fish pond episode & was clearly shaken by the revelation of Hammer’s Gypsy roots, but livewire that he is, he kept his game reasonably together to take top score with 24 – much to Orical’s disgust – lassoing another pin in the process. What to say about Hammer’s score of 13… I tried to help by pointing out he needed to hit the front pin for his score to count, but I think he was seeing fish swimming before his eyes or something because it just wasn’t happening: 2 ducks & a less than impressive score for a self professed expert – the pins might as well have been in an alley across the road for all the good it did having them where they were. No matter, his luck was in & he got played opposite an Artist who couldn’t draw so despite his pre-occupation with ponds, fish & ducks Hammer still managed to capture 5 pins and help put the Almonds in the lead by 8 as ‘ankers Chuckle 1 & Barnesy Junior flexed their muscles into peak bowling mode.
I know that we won, but events that played out the end of our match are a little hazy due to distractions in the form of in depth hairstyle discussion & swapping work experience with peRV. Barnesy Junior bounced out 22 pins, allowing 4 of our captives to escape again, but Chuckle 1 rounded up 3 before they got very far, scoring 23 and ensuring our first victory of the season by 7 pins. And Compact didn’t brag or gloat once. Is he sick?!!
We are holding an AGM on Tuesday 11th September at 7pm, before the start of our home game against Stokers at 8 – everyone welcome!
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