My day began early with a trip to the Coventry vs Forest match. It was a poorly attended game, none of the 3 so called Forest fans could make the 20 minute trip up the M6 to support their team. I got a lift to the game from a pensioner who had, only a matter of hours earlier got back from a gruelling overnight flight from Canada. The excuses offered for non-attendance were somewhat bizarre from the self styled “Forest Fanatics”.
Ash – Diarrhoea
Hopkin – No excuse offered – could not be bothered
Baxter – Cleaning up some leaves
It appears that the leaf clearing did not actually go that well and was replaced by some plate purchasing, here’s what Baxters Mrs had to say about the his ability to clean up leaves and other comments on the whole sorry affair.
‘good in terms of moving lots of leaves quickly however the collection of remainder leaves requires improvement – half a job bob. Furthermore, the general leaf clearing exercise was not assisted by the disappearance of Baxter for 4 hours to go to buy some plates – apparently it was very busy in Birmingham(BirminghamAlabamaperhaps). Needless to say I worked in the garden for 4 hours with a very bad hangover and Baxter arrived to join me for the last 30 minutes – how kind of him.
In case anyone’s interested the game ended 2 all.
Attendees for the Pool Tournament were:
Noz, Spike, Mike Bacon, Simon, Bruce, Prof, Baxter, Showelly, Aust, Gregs, Millers
Non-Attendees were:
Silv – unsure.
Rob – Pregnant wife
Ron – night out, night before.
Onions – night out, night before.
It just goes to show that you can take the boys out of total football, but you cant take total football out of the boys. The punishment for such a pathetic pair of excuses will be severe. A simple cheese and port fine will not suffice; they will be hit where it really hurts
Late arrival was Delbs who therefore unfortunately couldn’t take part in the pool.
The tournament was the usual complex affair, when organised by the Pres, of a team event coupled with a concurrently running individual tournament, there was a group stage followed by a knock out phase, a la Champions League.
Captains for the team event were the Prof and Aust (in the absence of the disgraced Ron). Only 2 players managed to win all 4 of their group games and they were both on the same team, The Aust and Noz, and by the end of the group stage Austs team had raced into an 18 – 8 lead. With only 11 players in the tournament all but 3 of the attendees qualified for the semis, those who failed to make it through were:
Baxter – 0 points
Gregs – 0 points
Spike – 2 points.
The quarters lined up as:
Noz vs Simon
Bruce vs Prof
Showelly vs Millers
Bacon vs Aust
This meant that 2 of the big guns would be due an early exit, Showelly and Prof both left us in the quarters and both would be disappointed that they could not go further, as expected both The Aust and Noz breezed through.
The semis pitched Bruce vs Noz and Aust vs Millers, once again, Noz had a walkover with a simple 2 – 0 victory, Aust found his opponent to be far tougher, but eventually won out after a superb clearance in the final frame.
The final was a tense affair, proven by Austs accidental potting of the black in the first frame, an awesome display of power potting coupled with wily safety play gave Noz a victory in the second frame and a win overall. After being wrongly written off in the pre-match odds it was great to see Noz have the last laugh over the Prof after having a 1 pound bet at 5-1 after the quarters, only Simon managed to take a frame off him throughout the entire tournament. The team event was easily taken by team Aust winning by 40 to 12.
With the pool tournament out of the way, the main event of the evening could begin, The Punching Competition. Bruce was desperate to regain some dignity following his 2-0 humiliation at the hands of Noz and laid down a 20 pound challenge, at a game of Noz’s pick. Noz chose the punching competition as his sport of choice and the challenge began. Of course it was a walkover and Bruce was 20 pounds worse off within minutes, a double or quits challenge left Bruce’s wallet another 20 lighter. At this point Noz had to end the challenge rather than let Bruce embarrass himself anymore, a crowd was building up behind him and sniggers were audible each time he threw a limp wrested slap at the machine.
So all in all – Noz = winner, everyone else = Loser.
The rest of the evening went well, a nice long walk across B’ham, marred only by some verbals with 3 young chavs, a few more beers in All Bar One and a late curry funded by the WHVGS, which was extremely tasty. The AGM has been well documented by the Pres, although a rather unfortunate event needs to be mentioned. A number of traitors voted against Noz being the Players Rep for 2009. Clearly these people do not appreciate the amount of effort, in terms of huge volumes of emails, which Noz contributed last year. One can only assume that these votes against came from those who don’t have the GS interests at heart. It left a rather sour taste in the mouth, spoiling an otherwise perfect evening and we have to hope that lessons are learnt in time for next years vote.
It would be wrong to end the report by discussing this unpleasantness, the evening was a roaring success, well organised by the President and all our thanks go out to him and the rest of the board for their tireless efforts throughout the year.
