Match Report Special - Bye Bye Baby
Oh dear.
After cruising through the early stages of the season with surprisingly few alarms, and in what will be the first of two grammar lessons this week (mixed metaphor anyone?), the house of cards came home to roost this week. It all started with me getting beaten. Not just beaten, but stuffed. Not just beaten and stuffed, but beaten and stuffed twice in one night. It ended the following week with us having to forfeit our game with the Golden Cross after not one of us had the brains to read the fixture list properly - we thought we had a bye.
So as slugger’s favourite singer Julie Andrews would say, let’s start at the very beginning – a very good place to start.
Match Report – Home versus Farmers Rats
The mists of time are parting, and it’s a warm autumnal evening at our match with the Farmers Boy. I had returned fresh from behind the Iron Curtain eager to impress a non-interested public.
With the halfway averages just published by The Slugger I was boasting an impressive unbeaten record – surely it was a case of just who was going to be ‘the Wonders’ next victim?
My opponents of late had been chewed up and spat out in a blur of 8 ball finishes, and the next lamb to the slaughter was Graham Webb.
Shaking like an 8 stone man in the shower room of a maximum security prison, as he prepared to break off he must have been fearing the worst. From the break he sunk a couple of balls – surely out of desperation to avoid the whitewash. When my visit came I approached the table knowing that it was a matter of laying the snooker and waiting for the two shots. I rolled up behind the yellow perfectly and strode confidently away. Bradley Bear was refereeing. I looked at him with a knowing “Ohh yeah - get that ‘W’ ready” and I was surprised to see a look on his face that was more “was that it?” then “oh yeah that’s it”.
“What the f… was that? You forgot to hit a cushion you twat!”
“Cushion?“
“Foul, two visits reds”
Yep - even after all the millions of frames I’ve played I forgot to hit a cushion and had just rolled up behind my ball in the middle of the table. What a bell-end.
Graham cleared up and I got done.
All that was left now was for the rest of the team to win every frame and nail my hide to the wall. The Bear took out Richard Meadows, Vic (in his farewell performance before going to the University Of Tax Dodging) defeated Albie Blackman, JY beat Mark Hedges, and the Coach put away Rich Hurley – who, disappointingly, had left the tight shorts at home. The Coach ending the four game losing streak he had racked up in stunning fashion.
Even ‘Magic’ got his act together and won! Could it be that the pain of my loss and the potential for ritual humiliation had somehow galvanised the team into a 11-Wonder victory?
The Coach made a classic move in the second half. Rather than drop me like a Racks Sandwich he opted to put me on last instead. Would I bounce back, like the aforementioned dropped racks sandwich, or would I suffer the ultimate in ‘double doughnut’ embarrassment with a second loss?
All looked to be going to plan as The Slugger started stroking balls on his way to a neat finish…but my new bestest friend blew it in the 7th frame. Having his single red over the corner and surrounded by yellows proved to be a problem as slugger tried a delicate little screw and snookered himself on the black. Graham “the Spider” Webb drew inspiration from wiping me out in the first half and found “the skills that pay the bills” to record a double on the night. The disappointment of the team was equally matched by my joy at having dodged the first bullet. 6-2
The Bear, Coach, Magic and JY didn’t let Kev’s loss affect them as they all won (9-2) and it was left to me to try and avoid the ‘Double O’ with a last frame match-up Albie.
I was faced with a horrible dilemma with two reds left. The finish was there but so was the up and down treble to use my one open red to pot the other one over the bag. Do I play it safe and go for the win or do I at least try and claw back some dignity by clinching Pointless Flair Shot of the Week? Needless to say I went for the PFS and got it, but it was at a cost. Left with no shot on my final red I had to launch it round the table. With the rest of Racks Packs support ringing in his ears Albie stuck it to me. 9-3 and it was a case of “clear the runway, the bagels have landed” for the now badly named “Wonder” Walls.
After that bombshell I needed something to try and cover up the shame. I needed some sort of equally tragic circumstance so the Racks boys focus could be deflected elsewhere and take the heat of me… and then it happened….
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Interleague
The following Sunday was the Interleague competition in Chiswick. Replace the words “piss-up” for the word “competition” and you know all you need to know about Interleague.
T o summarise, our Maidenhead team managed to lose twice to both Bracknell A and B by the same score line. Neil was “more tragic than magic” in losing four from four. The usual fights broke out, only this time were from unlikely sources (well, one was anyway) and once again Mrs. Coach went way beyond the call of marital duty and picked us all up at 8PM and drove us home. Frank Callaghan was there and asked Coach whose break was it as he thought their match was still going and it was 4-4 from last month.
Steve Ring won the best averages on the day, and in a ‘you had to be there’ moment, Coach Shiel tried to present the trophy to Leigh Morshead. Will this gag ever end? I doubt it. Robert "Johnny Dream-Draw" Uzzell produced another miracle by managing to draw his star-studded dream-team against the women first - very handy when that very same dream-team has only eight players at the time, and would have forfeited frames against anyone else.
As if to prove that his recent wins against the Farmers were a fluke, Coach got beat by a woman, and finally James Harness arrived having somehow survived being a Hull fan in the Arsenal end the day after Hull beat them 2-1.
A good time was had by all, and apologies to all female pool players out there.
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Match Report – bye/away versus Golden Cross
As far as we were all aware Monday night was a bye so we had all got stuck into the beers on Sunday. I appeared in Racks on the Monday at 6:30 for a spot of practice and a cup of tea.
After 15 minutes of chatting up everyone’s favourite comely bar-wench (the be-vested Amy) she asked where everyone else was. Bless her I thought, it must be hard keeping track with all the byes that we’ve had this season, so I explained to her that we didn’t have a game. In the kind of killer counter manoeuvre you’d expect in Spasky/Fisher chess match she promptly whipped them out – the fixtures that is – and pointed out that we were in fact supposed to be away to that haven of ravin’ – the Golden Cross! Doh!
It was a smack in the face, which is no bad simile considering our opponents, but by now it was after 7pm and far too late get the boys together. Everyone else had either arranged to work or wasn’t around and I couldn’t drag any of the racks regulars to Twyford to make up a team so we had to bin it. A schoolboy error, but perhaps The Likely Lads could do us a favour and beat the Thatched Cottage? No! In an unlikely twist they couldn’t get a side together either, and forfeited their game.
So our bye game turned into a disastrous night for all at Rackspack towers, as we lost 12-0 and the Thatched Won 12-0.
The 24 frame swing in one night has probably left us in an impossible position as far as winning the section is concerned, but thankfully we are definitely through to the knock out stages with the Likely Lads forfeit. We’ve an outside chance of winning the division but the permutations are more difficult to comprehend than slugger’s formula for working out the averages. Basically we need to thump The Likely Lads AND The Thatched Cottage AND hope that the Farmers Rats can take a few frames of the Thatched boys next week. It’s a slim chance.
Here in Rackspack towers we’re not ones for petty recrimination or for playing the blame game. However surely Coach Shiel is the Captain and it’s all his fault. As you will all remember I was ousted in a bloodless coup in the run-up to the season opener, and as such that puts me in a position to give some credible insight (not that lacking any kind of credibility ever stopped me from giving insight but there you go). I don’t remember ever getting the fixtures wrong. Granted, it was a rarity that I got a full side out, and it was rarer still that I exhibited any of the kind of qualities one traditionally expects of a captain, but rudder-less and most probably a man or two down, at least we knew where we were.
The texts rained in on Tuesday
Lee – “ I bloody told John yesterday we had the golden cross”
Brad – “What a load of monkey boys you lot are. You told me we had no game !”
Coach – “err I’m sorry yeah! Its my fault I think.”
Keith – “Don’t worry it will help cover up for my two losses last week – cheers !”
Kevin – “The king is dead, long live the king”.
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Match Report – bye/home versus The Rose
Having checked the fixtures, then checked them again, then asked Amy to produce them so I could check them, then asked Amy to put them away and get the fixtures out so I could check them, then checked with every member of the team, we knew there was no game this week.
You’ll remember that earlier in the season the Rose failed to turn out teams in two separate divisions and were ejected from the league. Well done to the committee for acting decisively.
So no game means no report this week, so we’ll get back in the mailbox later this week, and we’ll also publish the long awaited profiles of the founders members and contributors to Rackspack.blogspot.com, Mr Keith “Wonder” Walls and Mr Kevin “Slugger” Southam.
Keep it here and keep it real.
K&K.
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