Gaz
takes a brief look at 2002
2002 – What a f***ing waste of time and as far as I can remember (and this is my 17th season) our worst season for achievements ever.
For the second year in succession, not one of our teams have qualified for Great Yarmouth and only ONE player has made the England trials. We’ve not made the finals on previous occasions, but we’ve always had 4 or 5 players in the England trials.
In fairness, there were some good performances. The Girls only lost 2 matches, both to Oxford, and managed to beat and draw with Northants.
The A team for so long looked as if they were going to pull it off, but were left to reflect on the away match at Worcester in September as the root cause of their failure to secure the top spot.
And the B team…….well, some excellent drinking performances as one would expect and Captain, Gaz “What do you mean, you don’t sell f***ing Babycham?” Calcott, led by shining example by embarking on a sponsored lager binge on most of the away games with his crowning moment coming at Worcester in September when one of the opposition had to physically restrained from killing him after his remark, “Only a f***ing puff would have played that shot!”, wasn’t received very favourably – I still think he was a puff though!
The award for commitment to the cause, in my opinion, has to go to Scott “the Sausage” Varden for his display at the away match at Oxford last June.
10am in the morning and he’s emptying the contents of his stomach into a plastic bag (TRANSPARENT, TO GET FULL EFFECT!) and 3 hours later the Lad’s back on the beer – give him a medal, mind you, his pool was still SHIT !
Anyway, that’s all behind us now and, just like shagging “the Big Un from Wigan” when your pissed, there’s f*** all you can do about it afterwards cause its done, so lets move forward.
And finally, I have been saying for some time now that we need for some photos on this website.
Now I don’t want any of those, “ ..and here’s some f***er from Bucks with his man of the match trophy” type photos – NO! we want photos of the 4 empty crates of Stella that the B team consumed at the Oxford match with a couple of “Moonies” being done either side and maybe with a bottle inserted for effect.
A couple of Photos of Tor with her “Puppies” out after downing a litre of Vodka & cokes should up the amount of “hits” we have on the website. In fact, if we get several photos of different players (preferably Girls, although Lester’s got a good pair on him) we have a “guess the cup size” competition. So, what we need is someone with a digital camera at all of our pool matches. However, if it’s league tables & rankings that you want, may I suggest you visit a proper website like Bucks which is www.bucks.uk8ball.co.uk
2003 Season
What a great
year 2003 was as Warwickshire finally made up for it’s shortcomings in 2001
and 2002!
Baz Hinde
has lead his A team to a convincing victory in the regional championship and
will be representing region 5 at the Intercounty finals in March. In addition,
Andy Barnett, Liam Farrell and Johnny Webb finished 1st, 2nd
and 3rd respectively in the R5 rankings and will be joined by Steve
"Bobby" Mullan and Paul Willis for the England trials although I
should point out that Liam is choosing to have trials to represent Ireland
instead..
2003 saw Ian
Jones lead the B team to within 3 points of the regional championship and
congratulations to John Burke who won the B team averages trophy. This season
the B team is hoping to go one better and qualify for next year's finals and
this may well be helped by the creation of the new "Mens A and B squad
selection committee" which was proposed and voted in by the delegates at
the AGM in January. Several people commented that the squad had evolved
into 2 seperate camps and that ALL the players should pool together to support
BOTH teams. So the committee has been created and both teams will be picked by
Baz Hinde, Gaz Calcott and Graham Proctor with John Burke being nominated as the
fourth committee member who will step if any of the other 3 cannot attend a
county match.
Ali Wilkins
performed brilliantly both as Ladies captain and in her individual successes on
the table as she once again made the top 8 in the region and goes to the England
trials. May I thank both Ali and the rest of the Girls for their continued
effort and commitment to the county because without our Ladies team, we would
NOT be allowed to compete in region 5..
I must thank
Graham Proctor for the great job he has done in his first year as Interleague
Secretary and I’m sure I speak on behalf of ALL interleague captains when I
say how good the flow of information has been throughout this year and my thanks
also to Alun Jones who compiled and maintained the I/L ranking list in 2003.
I said in my
report at last year's AGM that under the guide of Terry Parkin as Youth Team
Manager, I was sure the team will go on to better things – they have, in fact,
far exceeded our expectations by finishing 2nd in the regional
championship and making it through to the play offs, but unfortunately they
didn't quite make the finals. However, the Youth team has secured 5 out of
the 8 England team trail places allocated to region 5. As our Youth
“team building process” has gained momentum, we now are at the point where
we now have TWO Youth teams. In addition, I would like to thank all of the
parents who have given up their time to add their support to the Youth team
campaign and I would dare to suggest that the Warwickshire Youth team set-up is
currently the envy of the majority of counties within the EPA.
May I also
thank the Management and the Staff at Suzy Q’s for their efforts during home
matches and we are informed that the venue will be re-furbished this year and
will become known as “Rileys”.
I would also
like to acknowledge the work done by Liam Farrell and Martin Kirby in organising
the Warwickshire Open towards the end of last year which was a roaring success,
so much so, that several dates have already been outlined for similar events
throughout this coming year (see Warks Tour) on the home page.
Gaz