It was a real pleasure to see old boys Ioan and Lee in attendance, and indeed they formed part of the first team in the competition for the night: Skittles. Barely A consisted of the aforementioned along with Lewis, Jim, Adam, Nick, and Batts himself.
Barely B was made up of Colin, Jacko, Mike, Paul T, Ian and Sam.
here they are
There wasn't a huge amount of variation in technique from a collection of skittling amateurs, but it's probably accurate to say that in a packed field of pacemen, Lee took the prize for fastest deliveries - they proved too fast for the shutter speed on your correspondent's camera, anyway, and generated some mean elevation on impact.
Fire in the hole!
Early on it looked like Jim might run away with the wooden spoon with his opening scores of 3, 2, and 1 - but Sam was going to have something to say about that. Meanwhile Paul Tovey arrived a little late and pitched in with something approaching ball control - he was the only person generating spin as, by and large, velocity seemed to be the preferred choice.
brown blur is the ball - multicoloured blur is Ioan
But the high-scorers weren't actually the speed merchants - most consistent performers on the night were medium-pacers Colin (32 first round) and Jacko (28 second round).
Lewis couldn't help dancing with joy
Meanwhile Sam was entertaining the troops with some serially awful skittling, seemingly intent on sending the balls either into the gutters or sailing serenely through the gaps between pins. He started round two with an inconceivable two ducks in a row.
Barely A had tied up the first round with a convincing 6-point victory, but there was no stopping Barely B in the second round - they grabbed the lead early on and gripped it like limpets. Skittle-playing limpets.
And their 7-point victory in round two, led by cavalry performances from Mike, Colin and Jacko, infantry back-up from Ian and Paul and comedy relief by Sam, handed them the narrowest of victories overall, defeating Barely A 281 points to 280.
A very entertaining session - for a variety of reasons - was concluded with kudos and big thanks to Batts for being on the case and running the show. Next time: Table Football?
