The post lockdown incarnation of my team at the rugby club quiz, the Boycs, consists of me, my daughter Jess and son in law Dan, and their friends Adam and Fran. Actually I say my team, but we’re just the current custodians. The team were playing in the quiz many years before I ever started playing in the quiz in 1995, 27 years ago. I did ask on a couple of occasions where the team name came from, but never really got a straight answer, other than it was something to do with Geffrey Boycott. (As a digression, in 1998, when Mr. Boycott was accused of beating up his lover Margaret Moore we rechristened the team The Friends of Margaret Moore for a while).
A week ago on Thursday I was in Poland, so didn’t play in
the quiz. Dai Norwich had asked me if I’d compile the quiz and be question
master this Thursday. So, on Thursday, during the half time break, Dai came up
to me and asked me to announce that my son in law, Dan will be doing the quiz
next week. Apparently Dan had volunteered while I was away, and Dai had
announced it then, but on Dan’s request had asked everyone to keep it secret
from me. So when I announced it on Thursday, I was the only one who didn’t
already know!
I am ridiculously happy about this. Dan is the first member
of my family to produce a quiz for the club. My son, Mike, has compiled at
least one quiz, for the quiz he attended in Coity, but I didn’t go to that
quiz. From what he’s said to me, one or two of the players there, who were in
the Bridgend Quiz League the same time that I was, gave him a hard enough time
in the quiz just because he’s my son. Well, in the words of Sam Goldwyn, we’ve
all passed a lot of water since then. But Dan will be the first other member of
the family to be question master in the rugby club.
I have no doubt that he will get a very warm reception. In
many ways, things are going as well at the club as they’ve ever done, quiz wise.
Yes, we maybe don’t have as many teams as we used to, although we’d settled at
6 I think back then, whereas we have five now. One really nice development is
that now there are regular – or semi regular setters from all five of the teams.
I’m only a semi regular – Thursday was only my third quiz since we came back
after lockdown during the summer. Mind you, when we came back, I really didn’t
want to start doing a turn as question master at all. I felt like, having taken
my regular turn for a quarter of a century I’d done my bit. And it’s difficult
to explain, but there’s just a really nice atmosphere there now. On Thursday
night, it certainly wasn’t the best quiz I’ve ever compiled, but you could feel
that people just seemed to be enjoying it. Because they seemed to be enjoying
it, I enjoyed it too. So I have no doubt that Dan will get a great reception on
Thursday.
Apart from anything else, I think we all appreciate some
new – young – blood getting involved. In 1995, when I played in my first quiz
in the club I was 31 years old. It isn’t surprising that I was one of the
youngest playing there by some distance. Now, at 57 and a half, I’m still one
of the younger players there. In one way, that’s great, when people still enjoy
the quiz so much that they make a regular appointment to come for decades on
end. However it does have effects. We don’t often get new teams joining or even
coming along to give it a try. Also, the content of a lot of our quizzes is influenced
by the age group of the players. The other players in Boycs at the moment are
all twenty-somethings. They’ve all played in other quizzes, and they’ve all
remarked that the quiz seems to be aimed at a noticeably older age group than a
lot of the quizzes they’d been to. Variety is the spice of life, so I think it’s
going to be a good thing, having a quiz set by a setter with a much younger
perspective. I’ll let you know how it goes.
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