We had played the Robin Hood at home last October and suffered a bruising defeat by 30 points. 30 points!!! We couldn’t let that happen again.
Nick was again determined to improve his recent shabby for
m and Tomo and Bob were second and third in the individual merits respectively whilst Wendy has maintained consistency throughout the season – bring it on!!!
The Robin is a welcoming pub nestling in the hills above Macclesfield that was serving Wainwright’s ale in good form – the team are good-natured and fun-loving and the Lemmings were looking forward to a keen closely-fought game.
The questions had been set by the Wharf and the Harrington B and John from the Wharf officiated as question master. Let the games begin!!
At the end of the Specialist questions a familiar score appeared – the Robin Hood had 63 whilst the Lemmings had mustered just 33 – another deficit of 30 and we were only half-way through!!! Nick and Wendy remained consistent with scores of 0 and 12 respectively.
But we’ve pulled back before and undaunted the Lemmings launched into the General Knowledge questions – only to find that nothing much changed – in fact it got worse as the home team notched up 101 to the Lemmings 51 – increasing the lead by 50 and an unprecedented victory by 80 points!! 164 to 84!!!
Individual scores were Bob 6/12, Wendy 12/6, Nick 0/9 and Tomo 3/12; conferred points were 10/10 with just 2/2 pass-overs. The home team gathered an impressive 6/16 pass-overs.
No armadillo questions noted (although other teams may do so) and there are no complaints about the questions – in fact we thought they were pretty good – it was the Lemmings answers that were rubbish.
The evening was rounded off with an excellent selection of sandwiches with chips – many thanks to the Robin Hood, the team and to John for his good natured question-mastering.
The Lemmings then set off into the cold dark night deep in thought as they threaded their way back to town.
2 comments:
Well, we certainly weren’t expecting that – were suspect betting patterns developing in the Sunderland St. William Hill? I think it is unprecedented in terms of the margin of victory for the Robin – perhaps (given the lack of sporting activity in Rainow), any local historians might wish to consider including it as a seminal moment in any future editions of the village history – or would that be mischievous. Presumably, as can happen, too many players had an off-night together, whilst we seemed to strike a rich seam when it came to fairly wild guesses (not a bad strategy for anyone trying to get off a run of iffy scores). I guess we’ve become a bit of a bogey team over the last three years, just pretend we’re the British Flag next time round – which probably won’t be next season. The Lemmings kept smiling (and, in Bob’s case, orating) ‘til the death, all credit to them.
On the one other occasion we have won by a distance this year, I could feel the rub of the green going our way in the questions – can’t say I did last night (but to steal a theme from the Harrington’s style of questions) in the words of a figure who died in December 2014, “He would say that, wouldn’t he”. News and views will confirm or deny in due course. I thought the Harrington generally got things about right, whilst the Specialists did tend to hark back a bit too much to bygone days in terms of kids/comics. The New Hampshire mountain/wind speed still strikes me as a bit of an armadillo. If anything, the GKs did open up a couple of questions with a couple of possibilities – if I can draw a quick analogy/economics lesson in one case: Consider free trade to be rampant alcoholism. Protectionism is moderation, but autarchy is teetotalism and, as such, would be a better (albeit more obscure) opposite.
Can I echo your comments about John the QM – warm, engaged, funny, although I wouldn’t quite go so far as to endorse the “variety” of sandwiches (ham, ham and more ham in a rather Fordist kind of way). Jay Rayner you are not, Nick. Still, the dogs (who formed a fairly formidable audience) seemed to enjoy them.
Anyway, best wishes for the rest of the season, I’m sure normal service/form will be resumed next week.
The wind speed question was a good attempt at an Armadillo but might have broken the rules because the answer was out of date (not that any of us had any idea on the night). The Mt Washington record of 1934 was broken by Cyclone Olivia in 1996 at Point Barrow Australia (it says here).
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