Just Darts Since 2009
We lost in the finals last season.
Scratch that. We were demolished in the finals. I think it was 7-2, but it could well have been worse than that. Good to get that off my chest. The Tracks team was just too good for us that night. It was a complete 180 from our previous meeting, and I’m done with giving advice to opponents, for sure. So with that, I’ll bury the memory of last season (but not the trophy we won for finishing the regular season in first place.)
Forty and Over for John
One day, I’m going to find out what their team name means. Playing against a strong team anchored by one of the best players in the league, we were satisfied with a 7-6 loss at their place.
The Cards
A good group of guys, and strong dart players. We caught them on an off night. An 11-2 win.
Oil Ca ns
Probably the best team in the league, perennial winners of the A Division. Inexplicably, they played poorly against us, and we’ll take it. A 10-3 win.
Because so few teams compete in the summer league compared to the others, there is a wide range of talents in the division. To compensate for this and give every team a fighting chance, a handicap system is in place which starts weaker teams off with one or more marks in cricket, and a lower score in 501. Because of this, I’d predict that you’ll see wild swings in the standings throughout the season, as strong teams are by no means guaranteed to beat weaker ones.
Should be interesting!
Sorry about the delay: between Thanksgiving and house-sitting I haven’t been home in a while, and now I need to eat before tonight’s match against The Office Cafe.
So, long story short, we did what we’ve done all year: terrible start, mini-comeback, fall short.
Final score: an 8-5 loss.
I’m glad we got this match over with right away, because Brennan’s is the place I dread playing in most. Nothing to do with the team, the staff, or the clientele, but with the space. It’s such a tiny restaurant that there really is no place for everybody to stand. The poor waitress is saying “excuse me” every ten seconds and we’re all shuffling around trying to make room. Also, when you’re throwing, there’s a big television screen right at eye level about three feet in front of you and slightly to the right, and that can be distracting, too.
They have two very good players, John and Zbiegnew (call him ZB!) and they made the match very interesting, in the swearing sense. Nice bunch of guys, though.
The big news for this match was the change in format. In the however many years we’ve been playing, the games have been set up 4-4-4-1 (four 501, four cricket, four 501, and a 701 game). Now, with no notice aside from an email sent the afternoon of the match it’s been changed. Now it’s 6-6-1. Two things about this: first, cricket games take longer to play, so now our matches will last longer. It’s a late night already. Second, whenever we’ve practiced this summer, we’ve spent twice as long on our 501 games because they’re twice as important. Third (I’m adding a third) team captains weren’t consulted about this. When you’re making a fundamental change to the way matches are conducted, why not get everyone to buy into it? My vote would have been against this, but if that’s what everyone else wanted, I’d try to be gracious about it. This way, there’s just resentment–and our team isn’t alone in this. Our opponents on Tuesday were none too happy, either.
Now, get a load of this: Since we now play six games of cricket in a match, each player plays three games. So you’d think that I would play one game with Vulture, one game with Meister, and one game with Rook, right? I played all three games with Vulture. I can’t even fathom that. Look at the stats for cricket, and guess how we did in our cricket games when Meister and Rook played all three games together. (No offense to either of them, but they were lousy in cricket. And I firmly believe they were that bad because they kept getting matched up with each other, and each of them felt the extra pressure of having to be great to pick their teammate up.) There’s a reason why the partners should be switched up, and it’s so no one player is continually dragged down when his partner is having a rough night. I have to hope this is a glitch in the new system and won’t be repeated, but I’ll be emailing the head of our league to make sure.
Okay, enough of my whining.
Final score, a 7-6 win.
Next week we play the Office Cafe for the first time, so who knows what to expect. This is a much harder bunch of teams we’re playing against than last year, so the fact that they’re 5-8 means exactly nothing.
Falling Awake 