14th February–Another Massacre

 

On the 83rd anniversary of the St Valentine’s Day massacre the two teams of the Waters Green Tavern gathered for the local derby. Tension rose high – lonely wives left behind to celebrate the romantic night of the year alone, seeking comfort in the warm embrace of East Enders. Speaking of murder, vice, doom and gloom …

Yes on this day all those years ago, Al Capone sought to eliminate his rival Bugs Moran when he organised out-of-town gangsters to rid his fair city Chicago of unwanted whisky smugglers, prostitution pimps and drive-by shootists. Two assassins were disguised as police officers and entered the warehouse that was used as Moran’s headquarters and ordered the seven people outside; there they were joined by four plain-clothed guys and they all opened fire. But the Moran gang were ‘ard!! Six were killed outright but Frank Gusenburg, who had been hit with fourteen bullets told police no-one had shot him!! He died three hours later.

It seems public opinion was not terribly impressed with Capone’s clean-up operation (since it just meant he could do more of the same) and the FBI were stirred into action – Capone was arrested for tax evasion two years later (tax evasion – the first zero tolerance?) and died of syphillis in prison.

The Rams and the Phoenix settled down for a different kind of showdown.

We thought the questions were very good indeed and whilst there were no big scores (except Bob with a very creditable 18) at the end of the Specialist rounds the Phoenix were leading 58 points to 43.

Just as Moran’s gang were dressed in Sunday best with no inkling of what was to come, the Phoenix sat back smugly and ordered another beer.

The General Knowledge rounds started and it soon became clear that Kalashnikov Keith P of the Rams had simply been holding fire as he started on a remarkable run. As before the questions were very good but the Phoenix did not do so well – in fact largely due to Keith’s run of 27 points (emphasising why he is the top scorer in the B League) the Rams massacred the Phoenix winning the round with 93 points to the Phoenix’ 65 giving them the game with 136 to 123. No complaints, the questions were good, balanced and fair to both sides but on the night the Rams were the better team.

The Phoenix individual scores were Bob 18/15, Wendy 9/15, Nick 6/12 and Tomo 9/3; conferred points were 11/15 and passovers 5/5. The Rams picked up 5/12 passovers.

It was a most enjoyable game overseen by Graham from the Park Tavern with good humour and firmness on time. It ended with a magnificent chicken casserole that Brian proudly brought in with his shiny new slow cooker – it was delicious.

Thank you Brian, thank you Graham and thank you the Rams for a great game – well done.