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Craptain’s ‘game plan’ for Tuesday’s fixture against the Phantoms was simple: get out in front and hang on for grim death! He also had a cunning plan to make our performances appear brighter and more exciting – he’d raided his kids’ toy box and brought coloured chalks along to make recording the scores on the board more fun, a good way of distracting himself from any low scores too as he had to concentrate on the colour pattern, and a very apt choice of ‘shitty brown’ for the Almonds’ ducks!
Taffy & Jocky took their Craptain’s philosophy to their hearts, and with the Churchillian war cry of “we will fight them on the alleys” ringing in their ears they put us in front by 15 pins by scoring 15 & 25 apiece. Not to take away from the Welsh Boyz gallant efforts, but it helped that Phantom 2 put a Douglas of Ducks on the scoreboard…
Wiggle & Turk were next up: Wiggle distinguished herself by scoring steadily and not getting any ducks, even managing to score brilliantly after almost severing her finger on the ball pipe: I would like to take this opportunity to thank my fellow team mates for their heartfelt and sincere sympathy for my injury – I have now been digitally remastered and am assured I WILL be able to play the piano, which is great, because I couldn’t before. Turk put 19 on the board without hefting any balls at the pins that bypassed the alley itself, or abusing it with bouncers, and did so with the usual colourful cacophony of bad language. We added 2 pins to our lead to put us 17 in front, and Craptain chose to put peRV & Orical on 3rd pair.
Jocky’s prediction was that Orical would be all right scoring this week – I am unclear as to whether this was code for something vulgar, so I choose to assume it was meant as encouragement to get Orical past his 4 of last week. peRV carefully planned his ups to finish on 16, going on 17, so that he could burst into song – he is having a hard time coming down from the high of Sound of Music and seeing his mate, CD, dressed up as Mother Inferior – and Orical got 20. This added another 2 to our lead, and at 19 up Craptain unleashed Lodge & Sparky.
Sparky’s competitive streak short-circuited to the fore, and whilst Lodge just missed his 30 by 1 pin, that makes it 29 for anyone mathematically challenged, Sparky hit 33 and took top score honours for this week. Lodge needs to take comfort from the fact that he should now overtake Turk in the averages and was part of the pairing that doubled our lead by putting us 37 in front.
So, spirits were high, every double act had received a “WPTP”, the scoreboard was looking very pretty with its greens, blues, yellows and shitty browns… and Craptain was smiling serenely to himself as he put Compact & aRCe’s initials up on the board, presumably because he could feel we had this game in the bag – or maybe he was just orgasmic about writing their initials… whatever floats his boat!
Now, I am no expert, but I think I know what went wrong here: maybe when they both left the alley to go outside for 5 they drew up a pact not to outdo one another; maybe they’d decided being 37 in front was too many to make the game very exciting, so they chose to give us a more nail biting finish; maybe they just played crap. However, I am willing to go out on a limb and say that they just didn’t get the support and encouragement from their team that they deserved, plus there was no motivation to be magnificent – these boys enjoy pressure!
Compact scored a dozen, aRCe a Legs Eleven and our lead was eroded to 16. Enough of a lead to make winning easy still for our ‘ankers Craptain & Chuckle 1, but they chose to make it the most excruciatingly nail biting finish out! Craptain psyched himself up by giving himself a good talking to, telling himself it was time to turn the screw… and promptly got a duck. Now, see, this just goes to show how much I still have to learn about skittles, because I would have said this was an error in accuracy on our Craptain’s part, but what it actually was, apart from the front pin being a teensy weensy bit off spot, was him toying with the opposition to keep the tension at peak – I know this for sure, because he said so. He certainly had his own tension at peak capacity, because when Compact politely pointed out that he needed to get the first ball in, Reg snarled at him like a cornered tiger. I don’t think that style of leadership will catch on, especially when the advice was offered in the best possible taste…
Craptain responded better to Orical’s instructions to go out there and get a 7, and accomplished this task purring like a kitten – by all accounts, all he’d been waiting for was instructions! Silly us!! Chuckle 1 was also feeling the pressure, and once again it was poor, sweet, innocent Compact who bore the brunt of his vexation… Keeping us on tenterhooks almost to the last up, Craptain’s 17 & Chuckle 1s 16 were just enough to secure us a win after all – by 6 pins. Can we maybe not have quite so much ‘excitement’ towards the end of next week’s match?, which is due to be played MONDAY 20/3 AT LITTLE STOKE SOCIAL CLUB, AGAINST LOCKLEAZE C A.
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