Historymen win to join St Caths and the Braggarts at the top of the table

Results & Match Reports

At the top of the table the Historymen returned to form with a resounding victory over the Opsimaths at the Albert Club, whilst St Caths slipped up again giving SouthWest a welcome victory.  The Historymen and St Caths are now level on points with the Braggarts who sat out this week.  Meanwhile at the Sun in September Snoopy's beat TUFKAC to keep up their challenge in 4th spot - just 2 points adrift of the top 3.

Other results this week:

• Electric Pigs playing at home in their new venue, the Royal Oak, lost by a single point to the Albert

• Dr O'Neil fell at home to the improving Brains of Oak (see ramblings below for details)

Quiz Paper Verdict

The paper this week was set by the Albert Park.  They chose 'the mother of all quizzes' as the theme - no doubt thinking of the upcoming sortie against a Mr S. Hussein of Baghdad which, indeed, may kick off on Mothering Sunday.  It was a fine assortment of questions ranging from the 'fascinating facts' variety (e.g. the origin of the phrase 'back to square one' - Round 5 Question 2) through the downright obscure (e.g. Estonia's President - Round 7 Question 7) to the 'what on earth are they on about' category (e.g. the 3 guitarists in Round 5 Question 6).  Along the way were some stunning pictures which win my prize as best piccies to date.  The 'Mother' theme, perhaps, wore a little thin.  The Pigs and Albert report that by Round 4 they were successfully guessing the answers before the questions had been asked!!  

The Question of the Week

However my vote for Question of the week goes to Round 7 Question 5:

Two former 20th century Conservative party leaders failed to become prime minister. William Hague is one. Who was the other?

For the answers and full details of all the week's questions click here.

Fr Megson

Humming in the Reeks

.......and so to our weekly letter from Rambling Fergus O'Rumpole...

A Chara,

They were humming in the Reeks last night as B'Oak notched up yet another mind-numbing victory, this time against Dr. O'Mengele.  A result that brings them to within a weasel's whisker of achieving mediocrity!  Father Megson, team mentor and sun-dried knobbly carrot lookalike, was exultant:

"Triffic, I'm absolutely supralunatic !! ", he beamed. "I've had some magic moments in the past"

(in a previous life of absolute futility Fr. Megson once led Stockport County to a first round qualifying victory in the Sherpa Vans (Northern) trophy and went on to achieve the treble with West Brom. - three back to back 1 -1 draws, one of them away from home !)

"but to lead a team to mediocrity is beyond my wildest dreams.  Different class,Triffic !  It's become almost a cliche in the game these days but on this occasion 'epistemological' really is the only word to sum up our performance.  In a very real-ale sense the team are more 'Sheepdip' than 'Pedigree' but they play to their strengths. There are no big names in our squad (although Roisin has 6 letters and so has Damian come to think of it!) and their knees tend to buckle after the first pint which is hardly surprising since they have a combined age of 279 but mentally they play like 6 year olds. They're willing to work their brains to the bone for you and they don't know the meaning of the word 'defeat' but they are learning fast. They moaned a bit at first when I introduced nightly Thesaurus training but they are really drawing benefit (subvention; poor relief ; green giro ) from it now.

"When I first came here I, rather naively, tried getting them to play in a cavalier 'University Challenge' type formation (2 bookworms doing all the work in the middle and 2 book-ends dropping off to sleep on the wings) but they couldn't get their heads around the concept.  Only the Opsimaths operate the system successfully but remember that at least half their team played together at Dukla Prague under the legendary Franz 'Kaiser'  Kafka.

"I know purists throw rotten eggs at us for playing the long-shot game but at the end of the day it's a simple game for simple minds.  I don't really give a fiddler's dram whether their knowledge is a posteriori or a priori just as long as they have the courage to shut their eyes and shout out something.  The Braggarts have been doing this since before the war and nobody's even noticed (their complicated hand signalling has less to do with joined-up thinking than with a rare and congenital condition known as 'Holt's Palsy') and nobody has been more consistently mediocre over the years than Kieran's lot.  Marvellous !"

Sports Reporter

Ballyboke Bugle

(Fr. Megson was talking to a fellow bollox)