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News & Views
2021–2 Season
Week 9

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A League
B League
C League
Cars & Vans 4U Trophy

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News and Views: 2021–2 Season – Week 9 – 15 February 2022

Results

According to the spreadsheet (see below), the teams that went "second first" seem to have had the less tricky end of a challenging set of questions this week; but with eight matches being played, four of the teams that went "first first" still managed to win. They were the Dolphin, Nags Head 'B', Dolphin Dragons and Sutton Club.

The closest game was in the C League, when the Pack Horse Bowling Club beat the Sutton Mutton by 117 points to 111. This was the Mutton's first defeat of the season, leaving the Queens (who held off a strong challenge from Waters Green Weavers) as the only unbeaten team.

Congratulations to the Chester Road Tavern, who enjoyed their first win of the season over Waters Green Lemmings.

That's covered seven of this week's winning teams, so it would be churlish not to mention the Nags Head – who enjoyed the biggest winning margin, over the Plough Horntails.

Tables

The Nags Head's victory saw them return to the top of the B League table, as the Park Taverners suffered only their second defeat of the season, to the Dolphin Dragons.

The Sutton Club went two points clear at the top of the C League, ahead of their stablemates, the Sutton Mutton.

Otherwise the only changes were due to teams not playing.

Individual

Top scorer this week was Mark Watson with 48. Alice Walker, Haydn Thompson and Alan Hodgson each scored 45. Top scorer in the B League was Alasdair Reid with 39, and in the C League Andrew Vickerstaff's personal best score of 33 helped the PHBC to register that narrow victory over the Sutton Mutton.

The only other personal best score was Neil Drummond's 39. And 31 of the 63 players failed to better their lowest scores of the season – 7 in the A League, 12 in the B League and 12 in the C League. (Not for the first time this season, Waters Green Lemmings were a player short.)

As in the League tables, there were very few major changes in the leading Individual standings. The biggest climber was Andy Johnson, who not only took advantage of the Academicals' turn on QMing duties but also managed to score one more question than Dave Barber, resulting in a move from 5th to 2nd in the B League table.

A League

Results

Waters Green Weavers 144 172 Queens
Ian Grieve 39 45
45
Alice Walker
Haydn Thompson
Harrington Diamonds 133 144 Dolphin
Brian Bogie 39 45 Alan Hodgson
Queen Bs 144 168 Nags Head 'B'
Neil Drummond (pb) 39 48 Mark Watson

Table

Played Won Drawn Lost Total Points
Queens 8 8 0 0 1409 16
Nags Head 'B' 7 5 0 2 977 10
Poachers 7 5 0 2 972 10
Dolphin 8 4 0 4 1241 8
Waters Green Weavers 8 2 0 6 1243 4
Queen Bs 8 2 0 6 1194 4
Harrington Diamonds 8 1 0 7 1148 2

Individual Top Ten

Team Played Total Highest Lowest Week 9
Alice Walker Queens 8 384 54 42 45
Haydn Thompson Queens 8 363 51 36 45
Alan Hodgson Dolphin 8 357 54 33 45
Ian Grieve Waters Green Weavers 8 312 42 33 39
Peter McBride Dolphin 8 294 51 21 21
Graham Bailey Waters Green Weavers 8 267 42 27 27
Ashton Davies Poachers 6 252 51 21  
Mark Watson Nags Head 'B' 5 243 51 45 48
Brian Bogie Harrington Diamonds 6 240 42 39 39
Neil Drummond Queen Bs 7 234 39 24 39

B League

Results

Nags Head 172 94 Plough Horntails
Alasdair Reid 39 27 Dave McGuinness
Dolphin Dragons 130 121 Park Taverners
Dave Barber
Dave Cooper
21
21
30 Graham Wallace
Chester Road Tavern 117 87 Waters Green Lemmings
Tony Moores 27 24 Tony Wilkinson

Table

Played Won Drawn Lost Total Points
Nags Head 8 6 0 2 1319 12
Park Taverners 8 6 0 2 1113 12
Dolphin Dragons 8 5 0 3 1224 10
Harrington Academicals 7 5 0 2 1094 10
Plough Horntails 8 3 0 5 1048 6
Chester Road Tavern 8 1 0 7 908 2
Waters Green Lemmings 7 1 0 6 696 2

Individual Top Ten

Team Played Total Highest Lowest Week 9
Paul Prior Nags Head 8 300 42 21 36
Andy Johnson Nags Head 8 252 42 24 24
Dave Barber Dolphin Dragons 8 252 42 21 21
Alasdair Reid Nags Head 7 249 51 21 39
Rob Parkin Harrington Academicals 7 249 45 27  
Dave Partington Harrington Academicals 7 249 42 30  
Liz Horrocks Dolphin Dragons 7 240 48 18 18
Graham Wallace Park Taverners 8 240 36 24 30
Ian Musgrave Nags Head 8 240 36 21 33
Shauna Barstow Park Taverners 8 219 33 21 27

C League

Results

King's Gambit 81 116 Sutton Club
Michael Taylor 18 24 Emma Griggs
Sutton Mutton 111 117 Pack Horse Bowling Club
Wynne Keith–Davies 24 33 Andrew Vickerstaff (pb)

Table

Played Won Drawn Lost Total Points
Sutton Club 6 4 1 1 831 9
Sutton Mutton 5 3 1 1 628 7
Park Timers 5 3 0 2 693 6
Pack Horse Bowling club 5 2 0 3 536 4
King's Gambit 5 0 0 5 427 0

Individual Top Ten

Team Played Total Highest Lowest Week 9
Andrew Fenton Park Timers 5 159 39 24  
John Poyser Park Timers 5 156 39 24  
Mick Graves Sutton Mutton 5 126 36 18 18
Simon Rumsey Sutton Club 4 123 36 21  
Mike Proctor Sutton Mutton 5 123 33 18 21
Wynne Keith–Davies Sutton Mutton 5 123 27 24 24
John Green Sutton Club 5 120 33 21 21
Wendy Brown Sutton Club 6 120 24 9 9
Emma Griggs Sutton Club 4 117 33 24 24
Andrew Vickerstaff Pack Horse Bowling Club 5 114 33 18 33

Cars & Van 4U Question Setters' Trophy

  Week   Setters Difficulty Balance Ent'ment Total Last Yr
1 8 GK Waters Green Lemmings 8.75 8.11 6.22 23.08 (10.57)
2 6 Spec Sutton Club 5.21 9.72 6.42 21.35 (21.28)
3 3 GK Waters Green Weavers 10.00 4.28 7.00 21.28 11.37
4 1 GK Nags Head 'B' 6.09 7.17 7.67 20.94  
5 5 Spec Harrington Diamonds 5.69 8.12 6.78 20.59 21.29
6 2 Spec Harrington Academicals 10.00 3.17 6.33 19.50 20.57
7 3 Spec Waters Green Weavers 9.28 3.91 6.11 19.30 17.48
8 4 GK Cock Inn 5.01 5.57 6.56 17.14 21.28
9 4 Spec Park Taverners 9.24 1.14 6.33 16.70 (13.42)
10 1 Spec Nags Head 'B' 9.61 0.00 7.06 16.67  
11 2 GK Shamrock Bar 6.74 3.77 6.06 16.57 11.51
12 9 Spec Poachers 3.42 6.82 5.72 15.95 14.53
13 5 GK Harrington Diamonds 2.37 6.21 6.42 15.01 16.28
14 6 GK Plough Horntails 1.95 7.11 5.78 14.84 (7.62)
15 8 Spec Pack Horse Bowling Club 4.63 3.31 6.11 14.04 (15.35)
16 7 GK Queen Bs 0.96 4.55 5.33 10.84 10.99
17 7 Spec Queen Bs 0.00 3.02 5.94 8.96 18.11
18 9 GK Poachers 0.00 0.00 5.11 5.11 19.63

This being Week 9, we have played the equivalent of half a normal season. This is the time when the spreadsheet stops taking last season's scores into account and just uses those from the current season. We would normally expect to see bigger changes than usual in the Difficulty and Balance scores, and some shuffling of the rankings.

This season we have three big 'climbers' and three that have gone the other way. Three sets of questions have moved up four places: Sutton Club up from 6th to 2nd, WG Weavers up from 11th to 7th, and Park Taverners up from 13th to 9th. And three sets have moved down five places: Cock Inn, down from 3rd to 8th, Nags Head 'B' down from 5th to 10th, and Pack Horse Bowling Club down from 10th to 15th. Five of these are Specialist questions; the only General Knowledge set to move significantly was the one set by the Cock Inn.

The Waters Green Lemmings will, I'm sure, be relieved to know that their General Knowledge questions from last week remain at the top of the table.

So what of this week's questions – all set by the Poachers? Well ... according to the spreadsheet, the Specialist questions were of pretty much average difficulty and balance; but it was a different story for the General Knowledge, which were not only the most difficult GK questions we've had so far this season but also the least well balanced. The teams that went "first first" scored, on average, only 85% of their average marks for the season, while those going "second first" managed, on average, 98%. Overall, the figures were 89% and 98%. On an average team score of 138, this could have made a difference of about 12 points.

Despite this apparent imbalance, four of the teams that went "first first" did manage to win; and of those that lost, only one lost by less than 12 points.

Neither set scored well for Entertainment; the Specialist questions find themselves 16th out of 18, and the General Knowledge 18th.

For the full spreadsheet, please click here.

© Macclesfield Quiz League 2022