Report by John Guy
On 3rd July the Broadwas AC team of Stuart Smith (handicap 4.5), Ian Lambert (9), David Kaner (10) and captain John Guy (5) assembled in the countryside at Eardisley to play the home team of Tony Johnston (7), John Bottomley (14), John Richardson (14) and John Lee (20) in the West Midlands AC League. Broadwas knew they had a hard match to come against an awful lot of bisques, as well as a surfeit of Johns.
In the morning doubles, Ian and John Guy had to give 11 bisques to John R and John L and played their usual ‘Alternate Strokes’. This was a dour, defensive game and there were just too many bisques and John and Ian went down 10 -12.
In the 2 morning singles, Stuart played John B and had to give him 9.5 bisques but Stuart drew all the bisques, made a good break and then romped away to win 26 – 17. This was the only match that ‘pegged out’ all day. David played Tony and in a very close game scores were tied when time was called. As draws are not allowed, play continued until Tony scored the ‘golden hoop’ to win 15 – 14. Bad luck David.
Lunch was taken with Eardisley leading 2 – 1.
In the 4 afternoon singles, David (with 4 bisques) played John L (with 14) and Stuart had to give 2.5 bisques to Tony. These matches were both tight games and there was little between the teams for most of the afternoon.
On the other lawn, things were more dramatic. Ian had 3 bisques against John B with 8, and Ian decided to use them all straight away to run 12 hoops and build a 12 – 0 lead. John G had to give John R 9 bisques and, unfortunately, had one of those afternoons where he ‘couldn’t hit a cow’s **** with a banjo’ and after 90 minutes was 14 – 2 down. As often happens, things then reversed. John B came back at Ian until they were level and John G got going to get within 2 hoops of John R.
As always happens with double banked games, starts had been staggered so all the clocks were showing different times left. With 20 – 30 minutes remaining, Ian L was level with John B but all the other 3 Broadwas players were a couple of hoops down, so things did not look too rosy. But all the bisques had been used up and Broadwas are always good at fighting back.
Ian was first to finish, running a couple of late hoops to win 19 – 17. John G then had a couple of little breaks to come through 22 – 18. Stuart kept his cool to triumph 20 – 17 and David rounded things off by running several hoops to win 19 – 13.
So a ‘whitewash’ in the afternoon and Broadwas winning 5 – 2.
In all the excitement I forgot to take a photograph but you probably would not want to see us all gloating anyway.
And so, to Church Stretton next week.
John Guy 4/7/26