Desborough Disaster

Post date: Feb 27, 2017 10:37:07 PM

ROADWORKS, temporary traffic lights and diversion signs all added to the excitement of playing in our last but one weekend friendly against Desborough. Some of us even arrived via Wellingborough! Who said you can rely on Sat Navs? Anyway, we went there four short. "No problem", said the very nice young lady at the end of the Desborough phone on the Thursday before, "we've got plenty; we'll lend you some of ours".

As it turned out they lent us two. With five minutes to go before the match was due to start their captain, realised that two of their's hadn't turned up. He stormed of out of bar into the corridor with his mobile phone planted firmly against his left ear. Ten seconds later he returns with an even redder face. Two of hisd players were suffering with colds and forgot to let him know that they weren't well enough to play. They didn't want to spread the germs around.

One swoop of our opposing captain's right foot sent the table flying and all the scorecards, which now needed re-writing again. Yours truly retired to the little boys' room, from which I emerged with others frantically waving to get the match started.

One on the first two ends; wooden floor; we'll soon crack this, surely.

On rink three we were smugly told that their No.3, Neville Humphrey, used to beat legendary former world champions Tony Allcock and David Bryant on a regular basis. We were 2-2 after three ends and didn't win another end until the 13th, by which time our lead had forgotten what you do with the jack. It didn't get any better with us finishing 31-7 down. We won't mention other names on this rink to avoid further embarrassment .

Although we lost 107-73 overall we did have two winning rinks out of five. Ron Blake skipped Val White and Margaret Grainger to an 18-15 victory and Howard Neath led our best rink of himself, Jill Goode, Serena Brunning and Bob Hulka to a commendable 22-11 victory. Elsewhere Jane Innes, Cherry and Colin Burgess and James Hebden went down 28-10 and Rosemary Roberts, Betty Sims, Reg Goode and Mark Hebden also lost 22-16.

Our last 'friendly' is at home against Sleaford. They'd better watch out, we're due for a win any time now.

Denis Stapleton