Doubles Dominos Cup 2012

It was the League's Dominoes Doubles Cup at The Jolly Drovers last night. The Chelmsford were well represented there but sadly none of us made it through to Finals Night. Myself and Angela made it through to the 3rd Round before being narrowly beaten 5-3 by Ian and Shaz.

I must admit I'm not always fully motivated in the Dominos cup games but last night was great, and I could't have tried any harder.

Its back to the darts next week for the Return leg against Leadgate CC.

Leadgate Cricket Club 6 - 4 Chelmsford

Photo by Deborah McIntyre

We were at full strength minus just one player for the first time in a good few weeks and I was expecting a better performance from us on Tuesday. Kris was the only one who played at all well in the opening Team Game (one brownie point awarded for showing the way) and we lost the game disappointingly. There was a damaging string of five scores which were all under 30, and it is really difficult to recover from such low scoring.

I prefer the Cricket Club's new oche of a line on the carpet rather than the aluminium bar they used to have, but we were finding it hard to put some decent scores together. It seemed the harder we tried the more T1 and T5's we were getting. There was no shortage of effort though.

We only picked up 2 of the 6 Singles points, and Roger finished his 32 really well to get us the last point of the evening and keep the scoreline reasonable.

Chelmsford 5 - 5 Moorcock B

We lost the opening team game in an appalling way on Tuesday - leading by 300 points we each took two turns at messing up the finish while Moorcock B quietly got down to the finish and hit it. Worse was to follow as we found ourselves 1-3 down after the Doubles games despite playing a decent game.

Any of the Moorcock players who weren't scoring too highly were making up for it by hitting the doubles. The Singles games were better for us though, and we made up a bit of ground by winning 4 of the 6 to at least get the draw.

Our Man Of The Match was Alan P. He hit a 180 in his Singles game which he followed with an 80+ shot to consolidate it. Typical of much of our finishing he still allowed a big lead to be lost due to hesitance on the finishing, but thankfully he finally got the finish to make it 5-4 in the penultimate game.

Moorcock B Team 7 - 3 Chelmsford

Open fire in The Chelmsford Bar

We were without 4 of our regular players on Tuesday night, but still put up a decent show. The score may not look too good but in every one of the 10 legs we were down to a good double (i.e. D16 etc, not D1!) and just a little more accuracy on the doubles would have seen us draw at the very least.

Michael and Alan both won their Singles games, and I'll award Alan the Man Of The Match for his 70 finish in the Singles as well as a winning performance with me in the Doubles game. They are our three points on the night, but we've played far worse than this and won in the past - it can be a strange game.

Tuesday was a very windy evening up there in Waskerley and many seemed to have chosen to stay at home, with only the 12 participants in the Bar. That said, Helen put on a great buffet and the roaring open fire was so hot you had to keep well out of its way.

Two Match Reports - Moorcock A Team

6/12/11 Moorcock A Team 3 - 7 Chelsmford
The opening team game found us both needing a D3 finish, which both teams split down to a D1 finish. Luckily Kris hit the D1 for us and it seemed to give us the edge in the following games.

Peter hit a 70 finish in two darts (T18, D8) in the Doubles games, but the rest of our finishes were all 40 and below. All players from The Chelmsford hit a winning double on the night, but Kris scored two of them and takes the Man Of The Match award with finishes on 3 and 36.

13/12/11 Chelmsford 5 - 5 Moorcock A Team
The Moorcock A Team were in far better form for the return game. Their finishing was much sharper and after winning the opening Team game they dominated the Doubles games to take a 3-1 lead.

It was all a bit of a struggle for us as we found ourselves missing several of our finishes. We fared far better in the Singles games but still needed to win the last two games to make it a 5-5 tie. Similar to the Away leg we had a 76 finish in two darts (T20, D8) with the rest of the finishes all 40 or under. Michael hit two of our winning doubles to take the Man Of The Match award.

Chelmsford 7 - 3 Shotley B

Firstly, a quick correction from my report on the Home leg against Shotley A Team : I referred to the earlier Away leg as a defeat when in fact it was a 4-6 victory for us.

Our Home game against their B Team on 29/11/2011 went well for us. Kris finished the opening Team game with an important finish on 5. Sometimes these small finishes are bust when aiming for the single to leave the Double. The scoreline then went to 3-3 but from this point we had a very strong showing in the final four Singles game to scoop the remaining points.

There are some pleasing highlights to report : Peter hit a 180 in his Singles game (Brownie Point recorded) and Michael finished on 72. Three of our players hit two finishing doubles each (Michael,Kris, Peter), but I'll award the Man Of The Match to Peter for the 180.

Bat Update (see below)

Here's the bat getting an escort out of the house. Bracken is on a "Leave" command so he won't even look at at

The bat did not struggle at all when gently picked up, and I left him on top of my dog kennel to fly away. I appreciate that bats have a lot of legislation to protect them and I have probably done something wrong, but I hope leaving him where he would have been three days ago before it flew into my house and hid would be OK.

Bats

My Bat

I have two match reports to update on here, but in the meantime have a look at the most interesting thing to happen recently :o) I returned home on Tuesday night after the darts to find a bat attached to my curtains.

The bat came into to my house three days ago and surprised me (to say the least) while I was in the kitchen, but I thought it must have left through the open front door and I couldn't find it after a long search of the house.

Any animals I find in my house gets safe passage out of the front door. Spiders, bees, wasps, anything - all encouraged to go elsewhere with gentle persuasion, so you can imagine the VIP status this beautiful little bat was given.