As tradition dictates, the Club’s Annual Dinner & Presentation Night finally brought down the curtain on the
2007-08 season with its usual blend of pomp, circumstance and casual vomiting when it was held on Friday, May 16th.
Thanks are due to Doug, at the Old Farmers Arms, for allowing the club to take over the venue for the night, to Andy Herbert
for the increasingly inventive series of Beer Races with which he punctuated the evening and Dave Nottingham, for providing
the vomit.
In all, 44 club members attended the Dinner and the first team, in particular, are to be commended for lending the event
the degree of gravitas that it is usually lacking, by turning up in rather more formal attire than has usually been the case
over the last few years. For once, then, the Club Chairman was not the only one dressed in a suit as he sought to conduct
proceedings from behind an unfortunately positioned pillar that obscured him from view of the fortunate minority. The evening
kicked off with an addition to the norm, with the customary beer race gaining political correctness as it included the weaker
sex for the first time. The race for the girls began proceedings, then, and saw the first team represented by Simone Delaney,
the second team by Jemima Mole, the thirds by Joan Marchant and the Club’s Management by Martine Elliot. Simone immediately
provoked suspicions that the first team had entered a bandit by adopting an idiosyncratic technique that was as bizarre as
it was successful and which suggested that entry into the boys’ race might be on the cards next year. Simone took the
honours, then, with Joan coming in second a little later, whilst it seemed as if the wooden spoon was shared between Jemima
and Martine, although no one can really be sure because, by the time they had finished some minutes later, everyone had lost
interest. In the boys’ race that followed, the first team retained their grip on the cup through Steve Bermingham, who
withheld the challenge of the Chairman, drinking for the Management, whilst Graham Withers (3rds) and Jamie Roberts (2nds)
took the minor places.
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| Dave Nottingham - 3rd team award winner & beer race victim |
Unusually, this was not the end of the competitively expeditious consumption of beer, however, as 1st Team joint
Manager Andy Herbert then proceeded to make it his mission to ensure that the practice was repeated every 15 minutes or so,
for increasingly fatuous reasons with increasingly bewildered participants. Once such instance featured himself, Mark Jacobsen
and Dave Nottingham, for reasons that never became totally clear, which saw Dave take the honours as Andy missed his mouth
and Mark quietly enjoyed his free drink in deeply contemplative fashion. It was not a victory for the club’s new Vice
Chairman that was without consequence, however, for, as soon as the last drop was drained, he turned and, very deliberately,
made his way to the toilets to deposit his dinner in the Farmers Arms’ sewerage system. 10 minutes later, Dave returned
to thunderous applause, even though further inspection revealed that he might not quite have made it all the way to the toilet
before his meal paid him a unwelcome return visit.
Following the presentation of a cheque to cover a fifth successive year of sponsorship from Doug Davies, the landlord of
the Farmers Arms and an honorary member of the club, and a standing ovation for Matt Harvey, the club’s hard working
General Secretary, Assistant Treasurer and Joint Third team Manager, the main awards occupied the evening. Full details of
the winners of the club’s nine awards can be found by following the link to the awards page, but special mention should
be made of at least two, which were the club’s most prestigious and, perversely, the least prestigious honours. The
least prestigious, the "Couldn’t Score in a Brothel" trophy, which is awarded to the player who has played the most
games without scoring a goal, was tied, at 32 games, between two players. In an attempt to establish an outright winner, it
was decided that the presentation would be made to the player who had started the most games. However, as both persons involved
had started 31 games each, a third criterion had to be used in order to separate them – the number of times each had
been substituted. Finally, a clear winner became evident, with the fact that Mark Cottell had been substituted 5 times during
the course of the season earning him second place, and the right to present the trophy to Steve Bermingham, who had only been
removed from the action once during the course of the season
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| James Gowing - Club Player of the Year |
Meanwhile, the most prestigious award, the Club Player of the Year Award, went to James Gowing. This was the first time
for many years that this award was decided on the premise on which it was originally established, which was to recognise the
contribution made by players who had accumulated significant numbers of Man of the Match votes for more than one team during
the course of the season, without gaining enough for any particular team to become that side’s Player of the Year. In
31 games for the 1st and Reserve sides, James gained more MOM votes than any one else in the club and was, therefore,
fully deserving of the honour bestowed upon him.
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| Please send any articles you might have to James Mole |
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