Broadberry Sports

Not many matches left, and tonight Hamilton were the visitors…. and Hamilton are like a box of chocolates – you never know what you’re gonna’ get!

Our team are either highly motivated or we’ve got nothing better to do with our time as we’re normally at the club early and have a brief warm up while we wait for our opponents. Ollie joined Chris and I on court (yes, I know Ollie and me on the same court! It was a bit of a squeeze!) and we basically just ran around retrieving the ball if Chris missed the nic!

Calum Philip turned up early this week and he was at No.2, so Chris (Murphy) and Calum were first on. A massive TAXI on the second point was Calum’s first mistake, as he didn’t get another point until ‘game ball’ in the 1st 🤣 (which was the ideal excuse for me to count the amount of ‘TAXIs’ for the rest of the match and stick them on the score sheet! …..there were 5 🚕! Little amuses the innocent 😇).

The 2nd and 3rd games were much closer, but Chris was on form tonight and ready to chase everything down, so he was pretty much impossible to stop – I obviously take full credit for the exceptional quality of the warmup 😊.  Oh yes, and a massive TAXI on match ball to take the first 3 points for the team.

Next up was Hamish (Buchan-nan-nan-nan) at No.5 against Norman Patterson. Angus was missing this week (no commitment!) and so Hamish stepped up as not only the new No.5, but also to take Angus’s place as the guy who always beats Chris at darts 🎯. Many people have underestimated Norman before, so I was keen to make sure Hamish didn’t fall into that trap. To be fair Hamish was flying tonight so I don’t think he needed the warning; Norman’s best game was the 2nd when he got 4 points, so it tells you how relentless Hamish was. Another 3 points to the cause!

‘2 James Sings’ (good to see Cammy used James’ full title on the scoresheet tonight! 😂) was up next against Joe Broadley at No.1. Their corresponding match in the first half went on for ages (in fact it was much longer that that!) so I thought I’d come back in about an hour and catch the 2nd game! However, maybe it was home advantage or maybe it was the tough games he’s been up against in the past month, but James was at his attacking best tonight. He really had Joe moving at full tilt and dominating most of the points. The first was 11-3 and the second 11-5 and James dominated both – mind you he was 2-0 up last half as well, so I fully expected Joe to get back into the match and at 6-4 up, it looked like that was exactly what was going to happen. Then, as if by magic, James Singh appeared (🎩) and won the next 5 points which gave him back the momentum to take the game and the match 3-0 and not to mention the small matter of the 3 extra team points. Great display from the self-titled Singh Shadey!🎤

There was confusion next as the Hamilton No.4 had to call off as he was ill, so I decided to let Kiwi-Cammy play the match against Chris McGeady (and I would play Tigger when he’d recovered). Well, this was a very entertaining match to watch as it was ‘disco time’ on court with Cammy running about like a demented spaniel and causing all sorts of havoc! Chris must have wondered what the hell was going on – and we were all thoroughly entertained by Cammy’s retrieving, the dives and the bizarre movement (in fact as Flash was missing because of a chainsaw injury🪚…. maybe Cammy was doing an impression of Flash!💡Don’t worry, everyone, Flash’s injury is but a flesh-wound and he’ll soon be back on court 🤕).

Anyway, the upshot of all this hilarity was that Chris had to cope with all sorts of angles and lightning retrieval, but Chris is no stranger to fast retrieval and so he was mainly in control of the match. At 7-5 up in the 2nd Cammy had half a chance, but that was as close as he got, and Chris brought the tie home 3-0.

So a team victory tonight and MOTM to James I’d say (despite disco time) and MOTM to Chris McG for the Accies 👍 – and it was straight to the Back Bar for footie and burgers for dinner (both sides of Glasgow were happy with the footie results ………and annoyed at the same time! ⚽ – and I was delighted with the Liverpool result!). Hamish’s position in the 1st team took a battering as he lost to Chris at darts  – which is just embarrassing! 🤣 Another great Wednesday – we’ll miss it in a few weeks 🏁

Happy 29th of Feb everyone!