Match Report 31/01/06

Compact was exercising his ‘wannabe Craptain’ muscles at the start of last Tuesday’s fixture against the WC’s, and provoked Real ‘dream on, wannabe’ Craptain into putting him on to play first with Wiggle – not sure if that was supposed to be a punishment for Compact or me!!  I did my best guys, pulling a pin on my man with 23, but his nibs – as well as getting less than me with 19 – dropped 8 pins to leave us 7 down from the outset:  not too nasty at all compared to some weeks, and we did want to leave the rest of the team with some motivation to fight – no good making it too easy for them! It’s a wonder any of us could focus on the pins at all with the cacophony of colour going on with the shirts…  Compact was pretending his was outrageous but I actually think he was quite proud of it: it felt like being hypnotised by Kaa out of The Jungle Book just looking at it!  Taffy / Batman – or should that be Robin? – was next up with Orical, who beat everyone hands down with his ‘surrounded by idiots’ T.  Despite Orical continuing to improve with the unorthodox wardrobe routine, they were unable to gain any ground and by the time their 14 and 22 were added to the scores we were 16 behind. aRCe, who was the best dressed deckchair in my opinion, held his man with 19, whilst partner Lodge pulled back 5 on the game for us with his 26 to put us 11 down as The Turk / Danno & Sparky took to the alley.  Although Turk & Lodge had taken the ‘outrageous’ dress code to the extreme and worn silly hats as well as shirts, Turk’s didn’t bring him such good fortune as Lodge’s perfectly matched green, probably because he didn’t go for the matching colour & style and therefore suffered from clashing woolly hat with Hawaiian monstrosity…  he finished with 18.  Sparky, on the other hand, had a fantastic night all round:  claiming his Team shirt IS the most outrageous one he owns, Sparky chalked up a stonking 39 pins, got a job booking off Taffy AND had the offer of some cheap cable off Compact – just so long as he doesn’t mind breaking a regulation or two. This heroic effort pulled us back a further 8 pins to leave us only 3 in arrears as Barnesy Jnr & peRV stepped up.  There were a few sticky moments, but Jnr stayed resiliently cheerful having only scored 7, and didn’t blame any sort of fcuking shirt into the bargain.  peRV, who had rushed away early from the Rover’s match purely to meet his own match commitments – so he says – scored a perfectly respectable 23, but this wasn’t enough to stop us sliding away from victory by 14 more pins. As they obviously didn’t like that odd number, ‘ankers Craptain & Chuckle 1 doubled it to have the Almonds lose more spectacularly with 34:  our motivational speaker of a Craptain – with his “you never know” slogan – put a 20 on the board and C1, who probably wished he’d been snowed in at the airport again, had second lowest score with 14, only twice as many as Jnr!   There was wild talk of wearing outrageous trousers for this week’s match on Wednesday against The Magpies at Little Stoke Social Club, or even following the Young Guns’ lead and matching headgear to shirt: but I take no responsibility for anyone’s attire, as the instigator of this rebellion against sartorial uniformity (i.e.  wear your Team shirt) will be far away in Sales Conference Land until our next home game.  I shall also be unavailable, unless somebody gives me a lift to avoid a lone female entering a den of male wickedness.