Mixed: Anita and Dan
Ladies: Anita and Juliane
Men: Christian and Mark E

The day did not end at the badminton however, as the gang moved on to the Grand Union bar for the Christmas party.  After a few drinks, some pizza, burgers and a quiz (did we ever  find out who won??) , we gave out the second most important set of prizes for the day:  the Shabby Shuttlecocks awards.  In the run up to the tournament, members have been voting for who they think is the Best Dressed player, Nicest smelling, most likely to hit you with a shuttlecock and the person with the best facial hair (to name but a few awards!).  We also celebrated Pete’s birthday by honouring him with a lifetime achievement award and a more traditional birthday gift of cake.

Happy Birthday Pete!

Soon after that, we somehow ended up playing a battle of the sexes game of “picking up a cardboard box off the floor using only your teeth”, limbo and also a dance-off.  Perhaps the less said about this part of the day the better.  For photographic evidence, please ask Jamie, who has enough material to blackmail all of us approximately 10 times over (especially Billy and Steve).

Congratulations to the various winners and well done to everyone who took part in such a fun, well organised and thankfully injury-free day!

This led to teams following a variety of strategies: John and Pete; who seemed to concentrate on amassing a huge amount of wealth rather than cheeses, Dan and Conor; who consistently underestimated the general ability of their competitors and bet against them, Tina; “Go big or go home!!!” (nuff said) and Mark and Jamie; our general knowledge boffins who followed a more “purist” strategy of actually answering their questions correctly, and were thus crowned champions of the evening.  Well done chaps, and many thanks to Conor for inviting us and Anita for providing the prizes (as well as our lovely new team t-shirts!)

Splitting into two teams we battled it out across an invisible net, armed with pints instead of rackets – ‘Never mind the shuttlecocks’ vs ‘Sun, sea, sand and shuttlecocks’. And a whole lot of other teams.

After the first half, both teams were doing pretty well, with all sorts of knowledge coming out of the woodwork. Then the second round started….with an anagram – an impossible anagram (of hatemonger) that caused unforeseen amounts of frantic scribbling and staring in steely determination at pieces of paper. The answer caused groans and protests pub-wide – it was thereamong. We still maintain that earthgnome and gnomeheart are equally acceptable as answers.

The second half ended with both teams having decent scores, but ‘Never mind the shuttlecocks’ having a couple more points. In fact, having exactly the same number of points as two other teams….leading to a tie-break! Jamie was nominated to take part in the tie-break, so we were all hoping it was going to be a dance-off (I have genuinely seen this used as a tie-break in a pub quiz before) but it turned out to be a guess the year question.

Jamie came second, winning a bottle of wine for the team – good skills FBC! And big up to Tina for organising and reserving tables!

Tina & Justyna relaxing after a tough match

On one sunny saturday, a few of us from Finsbury Badminton Club headed up to the All Nations Tournament in Dalston for some match practice before the start of the new season.

Performance in the matches was somewhat mixed but a fun day was had by all!

Quotes of the day:

“My bum has a big red beard on it” – Billy downplaying his defeat to Conor

“Michael was very trying” – Justyna (possibly) praising her mixed doubles partner’s efforts.

On the downside no medals were won, but on the positive side we all got to the pub a little earlier

Well done to everyone from Finsbury taking part (listed below), and many thanks to Richard at All Nations Badminton Club for such a well run event!

Finsbury entrants (3 September 2011): Tina, Justyna, Jun Li, Laura W, Rowena, Conor, Mike, Mark, Billy, Niels and Kris.

Conor, Mike and a very happy piece of toast