Streak News

I feel that I am in blood stepped in so far that should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o'er. Or put it another way, since it was I who brought up the subject of the winning streak last week, I’d better keep you posted until it finally ends – which can’t be too far away.

Since I last posted I attended a social quiz on Sunday, and that crunch match in the league on Monday. The Sunday quiz is a very nice little social quiz which John and I attend every week. 3 different question masters take turns to set it. The top prize is always a bottle of wine, and when I tell you that John and I have lost once in the 18 months or so we’ve been going then you’ll probably understand why we never take the prize. Not that I’m saying for one minute that anybody would ever kick up a fuss there about the same team winning week in , week out, but when you don’t want the wine anyway, which neither of us do, then its just a small gesture which costs us nothing and means that you don’t wear out your welcome. There’s normally 5 rounds of ten questions – three rounds, then a break, then the last two rounds. Only last Sunday the first round was a music round. 20 songs, and you had to identify the animal either in the name of the song or the artists. What made it slightly easier was that all that was required was the name of the animal. So although we knew 16, we took another two points by the tactic of hitting and hoping. That put us as joint leaders at the break, and it was highly unlikely that we were going to lose on General Knowledge, and although it was close we squeezed home in the end.

Then came Monday. The situation was this. The team we played against in the league on Monday night are a great team. When I tell you that they did the League and Cup Double last year , and for many times in the last few seasons, that should give you an idea of the calibre of team I’m talking about. So far in this season the only league match that they’d lost out of the 14 played was our home fixture against them. So, going into the match, we had 14 wins from 14, and they had 13. Which meant that if we lost it would be all square in the league. It seems very unlikely that they will lose any other match, and so we would be in the position of having to win all of our remaining three league games just to qualify for a play off at the end of the season. However, if we won, then we could afford to lose two out of our remaining three matches, and we’d still at least be in a play off.

It was a close run thing. In the 32 written questions which always make up the first round of a league match I would say that we knew just one that they didn’t. Two questions neither team knew for certain, and we guessed. They guessed wrongly, we guessed correctly. We managed a couple of more points during the team A and B questions, and to cut a long story short, it was enough.

So the streak continues, at least until this Sunday. There is a quiz in the rugby club tomorrow night, but I will be the QM. In fact I should be putting the finishing touches to the quiz, rather than writing this now. I’ll keep you posted on the streak after Sunday.