High Expectations!

Kingston Upon Hull Team CSSC Rounders at Loughborough

David Moore, East Yorkshire Treasurer, gives an account of his rounders team's performance at the CSSC Games.

On a cloudy late summer's day, we arrived at the rounders area with high expectations. How could a team with the finest athletes that HMRC in Hull could find, fail to beat the more inferior teams?

The team set up camp just outside the official's tent with a prime viewing position on the slope overlooking pitch one. The team, full of vigor and raring to go... well, with as much vigor as one could muster when recovering from the previous night's activities, debated fielding positions with much enthusiasm. Most of the team had not played since leaving school but this was not a drawback for these fine physical specimens. After much deliberation and watching a couple of other teams play, our first team format was set. How could we lose?

With eagerness, we looked forward to what we knew would be the first of many wins. Our first match was against HASSRA Wales. Clearly, the mighty Kingston Upon Hull would win easily against this team! Surprisingly, and despite a valiant effort, we were shocked to find that we had been well and truly beaten! This resulted in our team captain, Dave 'Cockney Slugger' Moore, implementing some drastic changes to the team's positions.

Our second match of the morning was against HASSRA South West. Surely this would be our first win and we could put the defeat by the people from a small country behind us? Again, we were shocked that even with the team position changes, we were nearly defeated without scoring. Pure talent and team work had meant that we scored half a rounder to avoid the duck!

After a hearty and well-deserved lunch, we came out refreshed and fighting fit ready for our last match of the day against another HASSRA team. Although we had not won the previous games, our heads did not drop and we were sure this would be the start of our winning streak. However, being able to catch a ball wasn't the team's strongest point and, apparently, is a main skill when playing rounders. We finished the first day without winning a single match but we knew the following day would see us win every game and we left the field with our heads held high, singing and swaying to "We are the Champions", which was blaring out of Ian 'Juggler' Jackson's ipod speakers.

After a good night's sleep, we turned up breezy, if not bright, and ready for action. Playing TRS proved to be a challenge and our unexplainable losing streak continued, despite clearly being the best team there. Ignoring our bad luck, our mood remained high, as we cheered for the other, lesser teams taking part, including the RCSL team from Yorkshire, who were enjoying much greater success than we were.

Our last two games followed the mysterious same pattern as the others, although we were showing some signs of improvement. (Hurrah!) Our last game. Surely our bad luck streak would disappear and we would win this one? It was against Merseyside CSSC and this proved to be our closest game over the two days and, due to some misunderstanding on the improvised pitch three, we were robbed and lost by just half a rounder. We had been so close to that elusive win that we could almost smell victory! Although we knew we had not lost through any fault of our own... well, the ability to catch, throw or bat excepted, we were well and truly gutted. However, our team had bonded through diversity and quite a bit of alcohol, and we had all enjoyed the two days. What we had lacked in ability we made up for in team spirit and we remained jolly to the end.

There's always the next CSSC Games - we might even win a game!

The valiant team consisted of: Adam 'Don Corleone' Grimmer, Ian 'Juggler' Jackson, Andy 'No Balls' Stansfield, Laura 'Cider Queen' Barber, Kerry 'Where's the ball?' Costello, Diane 'Oops I've laddered my tights' Lennon, Dave 'Cockney Slugger' Moore, Sarah 'Hard Hitter' Headley and Toni 'Swings Both Ways' Hadfield.

Click here to return to the East Yorkshire home page.