If Only We'd Had A Welsh Rugby-Playing Priest With A Passion For Heraldry and Asian Cars!

CUP SPECIAL! From Duncan Disorderly

WONDERERS SURRENDER WHITE FEATHERS TO PRINCE OF WALES

Hello all.

A touch of relief for the Wonderers from the relentless pressure of the A League was sadly not in evidence last night. There were lo-fives all round as they succumbed to the Prince of Wales (not in the biblical sense you understand). Even a recount proved a false dawn as it only meant that the loss was by three points instead of five. The Wonderers are progressing toward their ‘perfect season’ – no points at all.

Things began inauspiciously when the Wonderers had to do some impromptu furniture removing to find enough seats in the absolute crush. Protestations went unheard as the decibel level in the pub was as high as….as high as….as high as something that is very high. Added to this, nobody told the Wonderers that because the pub team was called the Prince of Wales, most of the questions would be about Wales. This was a Wales/Rugby Fest of massive proportions with some stupid car model names thrown in for good measure. “Never say Dai” should be the motto of future question setters!

Things took another turn for the worse when I was contacted by Billy Prattlefaggit (pictured here) whose temporary fame arising from my report last week has obviously gone to his nonagenarian head. He now seeks a place on the team as he thinks he can ‘do much better than those tossers”. I have tried to dissuade him by pointing out that he is probably too good for the Wonderers who, unlike him, have delusions of mediocrity, but he is nothing if not persistent, and has threatened to come and watch the next match.

The final insult came with the announcement that there were no post-match butties (probably because this is not a Welsh practise). Back in the safety of the Tavern I decided that it was time to do some raw head-on interviewing. First I tried to interview Wendy Brown, but she had gone home in a huff. Bob had gone home in his car. Most unlike Wendy but she has had a tough week. Wendy, as my regular readers will know, is from Liverpool, and there has been a spot of family bother recently. Her niece, Tracey was up before the magistrates with her boyfriend, Darren. They had both been found in flagrante underneath the fence at Becher’s Brook on the night before the Grand National earlier this year. The case was harrowing and the evidence embarrassing, but in the end the couple decided to plead guilty and asked for twenty seven other fences to be taken into consideration. Father Donald, from Darren’s local church remonstrated with him for his actions but Darren threw a bottle of disinfectant at the holy man, which resulted in his being fined for a bleach of the priest.

So I interviewed Nick Peck, alias “The Prince of Wails”. He was, understandably, unimpressed…

“I signed the effin’ petition to keep that effin’ pub open and I’m sorry I effin’ did now. You couldn’t hear yourself effin’ speak and I didn’t know that smoking was effin’ COMPULSORY in that effin’ place. And as for having no effin’ butties, well, I’m effin’ etc. etc.

Then I interviewed Tommo Cooper, who was much more philosophical about the whole thing. After checking that he was not, and had never been, a member of Plaid Cymru, he offered the following quote.

“It was OK, but I’m very, very hungry. Do you have any sandwiches about your person? Looking on the bright side we are still in the plate and plates are what I need. Cups I’ve got, but I broke two plates last week. Are you sure that’s not a sausage in your pocket?”

Clearly the Wonderers should sit down in a pub of their choice and ask themselves why they did not take the advice I offered last week. If they would have been in a proper frame of mind they would have claimed that having no butties after a competitive match was a breach of their Human Rights and should incur a four point penalty to the opposite team – that would have been it – job done! As it is, they can concentrate on the misery of the league.

As they say, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t put your eggs in one basket.

My advice is to keep trying, and remember, if all is not lost, then where is it?

Duncan

Duncan's Belated Report - and Some Sound Advice

WONDERERS FAIL ON A MATTER OF PRINCIPAL

Hello all.

Hard to improve on Nick’s excellent match report, but perhaps just a few words to ease the obvious tension which lies behind the matter-of-fact reporting.



No sign of a victory on the horizon yet but the Wonderers did have an A-League first. They WON the General Knowledge round. But there’s no denying that life in the top flight is slowly beginning to take its toll. Tomo was reduced to doing card tricks to cheer his team up. He’s a good lad even though he has troubles of his own. His one driving ambition, next to getting back into the B League, is to become the first magician to have his own show on the radio. Someone should tell him.


But it’s not all doom and gloom in the A League. The Wonderers had been told that it would be all a bit serious and anoraky and there was absolutely no fun or levity. Not True! Alan Levity was there himself, playing for the Principals! After the match I called the team to one side and gave them a little bit of advice. I know it’s probably not right and proper for an independent sports writer to try to help a struggling team but I told them that if they couldn’t beat the opposition by answering questions they should think of other ways of wearing them down.

I seriously advise trying to upset the other team in subtle ways that will put them off their stride and make them fluff their questions. For instance, one of the opposition team dropped his pen and quickly bent down to pick it up. Now to me, this is diving, and it is unforgivable. An appeal should be made to the question master and ten points deducted from that team’s total. Another of the guys took his sweater off. Again, that’s the same as a footballer ripping his shirt off to celebrate a goal, so another ten points should be deducted. Get wise Wonderers!

As these persistent defeats are getting a bit boring for an ace reporter I decided, by way of a diversion, to go in search of Macclesfield’s oldest quizzer. This turned out to be Billy Prattlefaggit of Higher Hurdsfield who is well into his 90s and claims that ICI had a quiz team back in the 1950s when they were just a small firm selling firewood off the Hurdsfield Estate. Billy sends the following goodwill message to all members of the Macclesfield Quiz League.

“Those were the days…. no crappy questions about SI units and State capitals. We used to get proper questions, like how many Boddington’s houses were there in Bollington and which bitch won best in show at Sutton Fair…. these days the buggers don’t know anything. I asked one of the quiz guys in the George and Dragon what a Royal Enfield was and he said it was where the Queen kept her chickens. Well, never mind, the old days won’t come back. I’m very old now. I've had two bypass surgeries, a hip replacement, new knees, fought prostate cancer and diabetes. I'm half blind, can't hear anything quieter than a jet engine, take 40 different medications that make me dizzy, winded, and subject to blackouts. I have bouts of dementia, poor circulation and I can hardly feel my hands and feet anymore. I can't remember if I'm 85 or 92 and I’ve lost all my friends.

But thank God I still have my driver's license.”

Thanks for sharing that with us Billy.

So come on Wonderers. Start thinking or you’ll be as old as Billy before you win your next match. In the meantime, in case you get a round on medical terminology, here is some handy stuff to bone up on. So no excuses for the next league match!

Duncan.

ARTERY The study of paintings
BACTERIA Back door of a cafeteria
BARIUM What doctors do when patients die
CAUTERISE Made eye contact with her
COMA A punctuation mark
CEASARIAN SECTION A neighbourhood in Rome
DILATE You live longer
ENEMA Not a friend
FESTER Quicken
FIBULA A small lie
GENITAL Not a Jew
IMPOTENT Distinguished, well known
LABOUR PAIN Getting hurt at work
MEDICAL STAFF Doctor's walking stick
MORBID A higher offer
NITRATE Cheaper than day rates
NODE Was aware of
OUT PATIENT A person who has fainted
PAP SMEAR A fatherhood test
PELVIS A cousin of Elvis
RECOVERY ROOM Place to do upholstery
SECRETION Hiding something
SEIZURE Roman Emperor
TERMINAL ILLNESS Getting sick at the airport
TUMOUR More than one
URINE Opposite of 'you're out'
VARICOSE Nearby
VEIN Conceited

Tuesday 21st November

We began the evening on a high note when we discovered we were not bottom of the League; however a sobering note crept in when we noticed that the one team below us still has two games in hand.

Even so, we have been studying form with Macclesfield Town Football Club ("Lose some, draw some") and the game was an exercise in containment - for the first time our opponents failed to get over 170 points.

Striding purposefully towards our goal of being the best losers in the A League we ended losing the game 134 to 111. The questions were not very well thought of (see the link at right) but it was a friendly atmosphere with some humour and good butties.

Individual scores were Bob 6/15, Wendy 3/18, Nick 9/15 and Tomo 6/6 but an analysis of the figures shows we do play well as a team. In the Specialist rounds, we scored 7 on conferred questions and a wretched 4 on passed over; the Principals picked up 8 and 9 respectively. On General Knowledge, we got 13 conferred and 9 passed over whilst the Principals mustered 14 and 10 - not much in it at all and illustrating that we play very well as a team knowing when to confer and giving very little to our opponents. Many of those we passed over were done very quickly without an answer, depriving the other team of time to think. And best of all, we won the General Knowledge round!

We were hardly distracted by the manchester United v Celtic game on TV but are pleased to report that on the same night Macc Town FC won their first game of the season beating top of the league Walsall and moving on to the next round of the Cup.

No doubt our sports reporter Duncan Disorderly will bring his penetrating gaze to the game and results with his usual touch of levity.

Correction

A slight error gave a misleading picture of the magnitude of our defeat last Tuesday - we actually scored 130 not 146.
Well done the Ox-Fford - we'll be back!

NO BULL AS THE OX-FFORD FFINISH OFFF FFIGHTING WONDERERS.

Last night's game as seen by Independent Macclesfield Minor Sports reporter Duncan Disorderly

By the end of the first specialist round I noticed that the Ox-fford were looking a bit sick as the Waters Green Wonderers had built a lead – of one. Then it turned out that the looks on their faces was caused by the fact that this is a Jennings pub. Jennings is that Lakeland beer with more bloody hops in it than a bucket of frogs. So I settled down with my John Smith’s shandy and concentrated on what was a good set of questions, put well and with good humour by Alan Hodgson. (I know it’s early in the season but are the questions getting better?). There was humour in the questions too, one of them asking them what the nickname of bomber Richard Reid was, and another asking who the Home Secretary was, adding a note that they were not related.

My reporting instinct to the fore, I took the opportunity to ask Alan Hodgson about his recent record-breaking achievement in scoring the first maximum 60 points individual score in the Macclesfield Quiz League. At least I think it is a record. I have been in the Macclesfield Quiz League now for twenty years (I am still searching for a life) and I cannot remember this feat ever having been achieved. Are there any players who have played (continuously) for even longer?

Modest as ever, Alan insisted that a free pint from all members of the opposition teams throughout the season would be an adequate tribute. The answer he got from the Ox-fford involved too much sex and travel to include here.

As a responsible and highly-unpaid journalist I have been doing some research into the nature of quiz questions. Starting at the most simple form, I boned up on what some well-known people said when asked why the chicken crossed the road –

Darwin:
It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.
Chickens, over great periods of time, have been naturally selected in such a way that they are now genetically dispositioned to cross roads.
Sigmund Freud:
The fact that you are at all concerned that the chicken crossed the road reveals your underlying sexual insecurity.
As an expression of the repressed desire to have sex with its mother. The road symbolises the barrier presented by the cultural taboo.
Jeffrey Archer: It didn't. I was playing golf with it at the time.
Stevie Wonder:Chicken, what chicken?

Anyway, back to the quiz. Early optimism was ill-founded as it was just about all over by the end of the specialists. These A League wallahs never send anything our way – only 8 passed-over points for the Wonderers all evening - miserable gits.


Duncan’s Digest:

Score: Ox-fford 179 WG Wonderers 146
Marks for Questions: Specialist 4 and 4: General Knowledge 3 and 4
Highlight: A really well thought out and enjoyable “Round with a Bite.”
Lowlight: A question asking what bit of the huge British Empire was
coloured pink and green on the map. This was not British
Beer: See Above.
Refreshments Good
Parking Iffy

Here is a question to keep you all going until my next gripping report.

Which football player of the 1980s, who played for ten clubs, including Everton, Leeds, Newcastle, both Sheffield clubs, and Manchester City, had a brother who was one of the most well-known Hollywood film stars ever?

Well done to the ffin Ox-fford!

That’s all for now and remember, if you want peace and quiet, get a phoneless cord.

Duncan

14th November

Restored to full strength with Bob's return we strode purposefully to another crushing defeat, this time at the Ox-fford, losing by 179 to 146. Nevertheless it was a very pleasant evening with good questions chaired with good grace and humour by Alan (Mr 60) Hodgson.
Individual scores Bob 9/21, Wendy 9/18, Nick 15/6 and Tomo 15/9.
The B League beckons and we've only played 3 games!

7 November

On Tuesday we played host to The Dolphin, a long-standing A League team.

We managed to pluck Steve from his premature retirement to replace Bob who was winkling at the Wincle Women's Institute.

Whilst we were beaten quite heavily, we nevertheless played well as a team giving away very little.

Our minor sports writer Duncan was not in attendance, but no doubt that will not prevent him from producing a nail-biting account of the duel from perhaps a lightly partisan angle.

Final score 174/121, Steve 15/9,Wendy 9/9, Nick 6/15 and Tomo 9/15

A most enjoyable evening against a good-humoured team with excellent refreshments provided by Tracey.

Duncan's Hallowe'en View

HOLLOW ‘EEN FOR WONDERERS AS FLAGS FLY

Tuesday Night's game as seen by Independent Macclesfield Minor Sports reporter Duncan Disorderly

Several tricks but no treats for the luckless Waters Green Wonderers at home to the British Flag. At the end of the Specialist questions it was hard to know ‘witch’ team would win as they were only two points in it and what with no previous A-League experience for the Wonderers, things were looking good! Tension was in the air and it wasn’t just the Chelsea-Barcelona match being watched by everyone else in the hostelry.

Sad to say the Wonderers, for all their fearsome reputation for catching up in the general knowledge, ‘corpsed’ by the end. Questions coming back across the tables for the A-league rookies were as rare as rocking horse droppings. A good quiz though, with the HUGE combined score (171-146) showed that it was a) enjoyable for everyone, b) had good question setters and c) good question vetters. Well done to the question master, Ozzy Mandias.

Frankly, I worry about the Waters Green Wonderers. For a bunch of people who are supposed to be very knowledgeable on all sorts of things, this particular reporter would like to know why, on the 31st October, with arctic weather closing in over Macclesfield, two of them turned up in T-shirts. One member, Wendy, admitted that the temperature gauge on her broomstick, parked outside, was reading 3 degrees, and I’m not talking iffy pop groups!

Still, you can’t have everything – you’d have nowhere to put it.

Congratulations to the British Flag (bastards).

October 31st

The first quiz of the new season was a very pleasant affair against the British Flag, with the questions asked by the secretary of the League Mark - he did a great job both in setting the qestions and running the quiz.
Sadly we lost the game by 171 to 146 but it was most enjoyable and there was a fine spread afterwards to go with the consolatory beer.
You will see link on the right to the questions.