A move in the right direction

Couple of weeks ago during a team talk I highlighted our poor Men's 4s home form and got a somewhat negative reaction to my suggestion to play away from rather than parallel to the clubhouse. But having subsequently talked to a few players, we're doing it at tonight's home match against Eynesbury B. The theory goes that most of the B Team players only play in the social roll ups and Over 60s triples. Being afternoon games, they're all played away from the clubhouse. Agreed the change with our head groundsman, forewarned the player I got most negative reaction from. Arrive early at the ground to prepare things.

One-third into the match and things don't look good. We're winning comfortably on our rink 12-3. Wish it were so on the other two, where we're losing 1-7 and 4-9. Looking so dire one of the senior players looks glumly at me and says 'Isn't  working, mate'. 'Keep the faith' says I, suspecting they're the authors of their own misfortune.

An additional problem is every other end we're playing into the sun. It's so strong over the clubhouse roof, there's no way you can get a decent look at the jack even wearing  a hat. But it's just as bad for the opposition as for us.

Check the scores a few ends later. What's happened? Both the losing rinks have now caught up. And they continue to score and score. Each end with winning scores of 21-9 and 20-13. On our rink the opposition rally, winning the last six ends. Not enough to catch up. We win 17-13. Overall win 7-0 to us in points. That should lift us several positions in the division.

We've only got one more home game, the last of the season against the top club, and I'm away in Scotland for that. So a somewhat short lived satisfaction that my decision proved correct. Here are this evening's scorecards.