'Horse and Groom A' Skittles Review

Tight finish at the Labour Club March 16, 2008

The HGA made it a second win in a row with a dramatic finish against the Taverners on Friday night. Leg one wasn’t the best from either side but the A Team did manage to build a useful 14 point box despite only getting 49 on the leg; this was helped by new comer JJ getting 9 to open his account. Buoyed by this Daz opened the second leg with a flopper finish with 15 after throwing ball 2 away. Another 9 from JJ and 8 from Mr. Faulks help the team to a 64 leg and a lead now of 30. Cruising at this point things started to go wrong. Despite JJ continuing his strong form with 8 and 9s from I Hill and J Faulks the side could only manage a leg score of 50 opening the door to a comeback from the Taverners who were scored a strong 60 themselves pulling right back in to the match. Good scoring from the lower order in the 4th leg meant that only another 5 points were lost leaving the game set up for a tense 5th and final leg.

The 5th leg began with the A Team now only 15 up and their form dipping while after pulling back half of their deficit the Taverners morale was high. The early scoring was tight but only JJ was able to match his man in the top half and the lead was now down to 10. The bottom half didn’t fair much better as the lead disappeared behind strong Taverners play, and by the time Mr. Gill was up to finish the game a score of 9 or more was needed to have any real hope of winning the match as the Taverners were now up by 1. 7 pins went down with ball one, leaving a split requiring 2 pins with each of the last 2 balls for the 9. After a disappointing first 4 legs he finally had a little bit of luck and hit the 9. The Taverners final player needing 8 to tie and split the points evenly or 9 to win could only manage 7 give the HGA 4 points and hope of getting off the bottom of the table.