Man, oh man. The Claremorris AFC sports quiz has become the bane of my life.
A quick recap. Two years ago myself, Ger, Willie and Andy hit the lead after round 8, only to perform disasterously in the following (picture) round and finished fifth. Last year the same team were in third all night long and couldn’t close the gap on the teams above. But at least we finished on the podium.
Last night, with new team member Jason in for the now-emigrated Andy, we were in second place right from the first round. Seven rounds later, we were still second, just one point behind the same leading team.
It was at this point that, once again, the wheels came off the wagon. We finished pretty poorly, with two consecutive 7/10 rounds, and dropped down the leaderboard to finish fourth on 89/100. 🙁
This is an annual event on the Claremorris quizzing calendar and attracts a regular crowd of hardcore sports fans. The pressure is pretty intense as teams in the room will score 9/10 more often than not. Ourselves, for instance, we scored four perfect rounds, including the pictures (see below). Thus we knew that, finishing as we did, we hadn’t a hope of getting anything.
For the record, the winners (table 16) scored 93/100, with two teams just behind them on 92. That pair of teams forwent the option of a playoff and simply divided up the second and third prizes between them. By my count there were 18 teams in the room.
The quizmaster, Kevin, did a good job keeping the show going albeit he was left stranded by a couple of questions, which were written by someone else, having more than one correct answer. Cue a lot of heckling! He handled it well though, allowing a couple of extras and, more impressively, disallowing a few also.
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