Ironically, my team are the Boycs - short for Boycott.

It was a tale of two quizzes again this week. Yes, it was the monthly film quiz in the Gwyn Hall. July’s theme was Disney movies. Now way back in the day, some twenty years ago, my late teammate Anne and I always used to say that if we could only win one quiz in the rugby club a year, then we would want it to be the end of year quiz. Well, when it comes to the film quiz in the Gwyn, if there was only one quiz in the year we could win, we’d want it to be this one. We’d put quite a lot of pressure on ourselves with our performance last year, when we had already amassed a winning total before the questions in the last round were even asked. Well, to cut a long story short, we did not amass a winning total before the last round on Wednesday. Thankfully there was daylight between ourselves and the second placed team at the end – but not so much as last year.

As a local quiz, I think that last night’s was the best attended I’ve ever played in. I think that I’m right in saying that there were forty four teams last night, which is remarkable really. Yeah, I know, we would have about a hundred teams sometimes for the Birmingham mega-quiz, but Birmingham is certainly not local.

I mention this because it’s the time of year when attendance at the rugby club quiz becomes a bit sparse at times, what with people going on holiday. In fact we arrived last night to be greeted by Mr. Norwich with a heartfelt plea for my team to provide question masters for quizzes on 10^th and 17^th August. Well, I’m sketching in wonderful wonderful Copenhagen for a few days in early August and I’m not back until the 11^th (don’t blub – I will catch up as soon as I get back.)So Jess is going to do the 10^th and I’ll do the other.

I think it was Adam who made the very pertinent point to Dai – wouldn’t it be a good idea if all of the teams took it in turns to provide a quiz and a question master. I have known places where this is the norm and it has worked successfully. However, we’re walking a bit of a precarious line at the club at the moment. We have only five regular teams, and to be fair four of these teams do provide at least one question master on a regular or semi-regular basis. However there’s no obligation for them to do so. Our fear is that if were to become a regular obligation, then we might end up losing teams, which is something we just can’t afford. So we’ve ended up with this situation whereby one team never provides a question master, while our team provides four.

It isn’t a perfect world, so it’s sometimes necessary to accept an imperfect situation like this. I would far rather put in the time and effort tto make a quiz now and then, than have weeks when there’s no quiz because there’s no question master.

However, that doesn’t mean I think we should give in to threats along the lines of one I was told of last night. If you read my post about last week’s quiz, you might remember that it really was not very enjoyable in my opinion. Well, it turns out this was an opinion shared by pretty much everyone who expressed one. Mr. N. said that he’d had his ear bent by members of all of the other teams. In particular he said that one team had threatened that if last week’s setter were to do it again, they would not be turning up for the quiz.

This is a tricky one. It’s not actually black and white. I mean, if you really don’t enjoy a quiz set by a particular setter should you really be under any obligation to attend it? Well, maybe not. But in our particular situation, though, I kind of think that it’s rather churlish if you do start to give a particular question master a miss. Most of us come week in, week out, expecting that there will be a quiz for us. Of the 20 – 30 regular players, less than 10 produce a quiz for everyone else on anything like a regular basis. So I don’t think it’s unfair to expect the rest to show some appreciation by turning up whenever possible.

Yeah, I know I was moaning about the quiz last week. However, that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t turn up next time this setter does it. Lord knows, in the last 28 years we’ve had a couple of very poor setters in the quiz but I’ve always turned up for them if I could. There was only one setter I boycotted I the club ad as I’ve explained in the past, that was personal issue, not because her quizzes were frankly mediocre at best (which they were).

I’d like to think that I’ve mellowed a bit in the years we’ve known each other, dearly beloved. So I’m not going to say – hey, if you never do a quiz yourself you’ve got no right to boycott someone else’s quiz. However, I can’t help feeling that if you don’t like someone else’s quiz, have a go at one yourself and try to show them how it should be done.