Joe and Me

When I played Joe on Saturday in the first of our best-of-three tie, he had used his bisques early.

The same happened with the second match, this time played at the Meadows. I won the toss and elected to play second. Joe chose the red and yellow balls – or the thistle balls as I think of them - and started by hitting yellow to the traditional opening position, just north of corner 4. I aimed at yellow with my blue ball and hit. I croqueted both balls into the centre of the lawn and then used the continuation stroke to head back to corner 4 with blue. Joe aimed at blue with his second ball, the red, but missed. This would have left me a two-ball target and a ball in the middle of the lawn, so he decided to take a bisque before I had played my second ball onto the lawn. With red, he roqueted blue, and pushing blue towards hoop 2, headed for his roquet with yellow. He got in poor rush position on yellow, and ended up with a long attempt to run hoop 1. He jawsed it, sticking in the hoop. With a perfect 4 ball break position laid out, he had little option but to use his second bisque to run hoop 2. But with only three balls on the lawn, he broke down after only running 2 hoops.

Two hoops, but for the price of 2 of his 3 bisques. Before I’d even played my second shot, I knew I was in a good position. And that helped. I hit in with black and managed to run five hoops. After my next break, black was round to penult. When I hit in with blue shortly after, black was on rover. Joe didn’t get another shot. I was lucky to make a long angled shot to run hoop two, and by hoop 5 or 6 had all four balls in play in the break. My attempted peel of black through rover after 2 back failed, but I managed to peel it when running rover with blue, and to then peg out. 26-4, and the title was mine. Not bad for my second season.

Joe and I had a cup of tea, chatted, and watched the rest of the club playing. And then he drove back to Glasgow and I headed to the pub.