Mens 2nd XI Vs London Gamblers M1

Picture yourselves holed up in Mrs Miggins Pie Shop avoiding a dangerous fog!!!!

Josh’s white, black and a little yellow uniformed forest rescue team believe they would have little to do as no one would want to tranverse Cyril the Squirrel’s forest with the fog about. Sadly, it isn’t long before Mrs Miggins approaches Josh and informs him that her latest delivery of a new flavour of pie is late. The new pie, she goes on to tell us is, coming all the way from St.Wreath-them and is called Clap of Ham. (Known locally as the ‘clap’.)

Josh asks, “Who would be testing their luck so much in the obvious pea-souper of a fog?”

Mrs Miggin’s replies, “Well they are a right bunch of rogue ruffians and gamblers…)

Miles, Josh’s second in command gathers the rescue party. We would have to go and rescue them. Even though, one of the rescue team (Ishan) hadn’t arrived yet… (probably lost in the fog too!) So we endeavoured to leave a note, letting him know what search pattern we were going to use, so he could catch us up. This was mainly because Ishan carries the bulky gear. Rich, last years rescuer, stepped up to carry Ishan’s burden and no doubt hoped Ishan would catch us up sooner rather than later.

 Now Cyril the Squirrel likes watching the rescue party do their work, so sets himself up comfortably in his rocking chair on the deck of his treehouse, high up in the branches of the tallest tree to observe the rescue team in action. Though he could see that the fog would be very tricky to navigate. He knew that the rescue team would be fine as they are professionals. Their quarry, however, were clearly chancers. As such he asked some of his forest friends for aid. Two nymphs turned up and were sent down into the foggy forest to help the risk taking ‘clap’ deliverers.

The search started a little tentatively, when perhaps a more expansive and quicker search might have led to a couple of the gamblers being found early. Had we trusted the valiant Harry, Benji and Tom earlier. However, hindsight is a wonderful thing etc, etc. An early warning of the danger was when the normally ever reliable Dave managed a rescue a little slower than normal and one of the rapscallions tried to escape!

Sadly, one of the scoudrel’s managed to slip slipped through the back right net of the searchers and the normally stalwart Tony was bypassed by a ‘clap’ carrying bounder! Must have been something to do with the fog or perhaps it was the call of Ishan who was close to joining us for the lapse?

So, the bulky gear was passed over and Rich ventured to the front to look to carry on his exemplar rescue rate. However, during the distraction another one of the rascal’s managed to slip through the search team, sadly we had predicted the spot that they might try to but the reprobates pulled the rescue team out of place with an apparently well practiced disruption of Josh’s beleaguered team. It was clear this was not going to be an easy rescue!

The rescuers tightened their belts and there were no surprises for a while. Sadly, the cad’s were still evading the rescue party and there were times when the Kane, Miles and Jiano tried to rescue too many of their quarry at once. Other times we were to far away from the ‘clap’ smugglers. However, no more of them were getting away at this point.
Sadly, through another well organised, yet predictable escape attempt was successful. Sadly for Tony, who had realised that his Maginot line had been misplaced and had moved it to the other side of the search area, was bypassed once again! Inouïe!

Now, many rescue teams here would have panicked at the amount of ‘Claps’ that had got through the rescue net. So many that it could have turned into a full applause! The gamblers were so dastardly that at one point they tried to get Kane to eat one of their pies (no doubt to try to blame him for it!) However, under the apparently watchful eye of one of the Nymphs, he apparently managed to through himself to the ground as he didn’t want the ‘clap.’ Elsewhere, throughout the forest the louts were pushing their rescuers (Tom, Harry, Miles, Jiano) away. One of them even threw a rock into the trees. There was a loud squeak as Cyril the Squirrel was knocked off of his seat. However, the Nymphs made sure that the fog hidden travellers from St.Wreath-them were safe, so the rescue could continue. A couple of the Gamblers had gotten past all off the rest of the rescue team and looked like they were going to break free and they would have done with it wasn’t for an outstanding effort by Ishan.

However, the hide and seek antics were starting to get found out and as Josh’s team looked to liberate the Gamblers from the foggy forest. Rich combined with Tom. Rich’s rescue instincts kicking in and passing a message to Tom who was able to pounce on one of the bounders with a mere glance! Shortly afterwards, Jamie had a nice chat with one of the Nymphs. They were discussing what actually defined a pie. Jamie having seen a number of the ‘supposed’ pies by now had spotted that the crusts had an extra layer of a pizza base on the top. The discussion went on a little while with Jamie questioning if it was still a pie if it had a pizza base on its top and suggesting it would be very difficult to eat because of this. The Nymph, however, had a different opinion. One that she believed it was still a pie and the pizza base was not something that would make eating the pie hard. During the conversation, the rascals were suggestion that Jamie buys one of the pies. The Nymph started to think the same as the rascals and asked Jamie if he wanted to pay by card. Given he knew these pies where supposed to be going to Mrs Miggin’s pie shop, he declined. Given the pizza top, it is quite possible he didn’t want the ‘clap’ either way. Still the conversation was so riveting that it was agreed by most that it deserved the deal of the day aka ‘dotd’ once we got back to the pie shop!

Buoyed by the upcoming deal. Jamie launched a surprise rescue attempted having got Kane the other side of them, only for one of the Nymphs to say that the rascals were not ready to be rescued! Very bizarre! Benji who had been excellent through the search with them thinking they had snuck past them only to find him on the other side of them multiple times during the search; Tom has been moving tirelessly to round up there stragglers at the back and had teased out their bulky item carrier who was very lucky not to have been captured at the time; and both Jiano and Miles who were starting to get more successful at trying to gather the Nymph guided suppliers of Mrs Miggin’s lead to our own successful team move, with us surrounding five of them by a net. Rich did what he does and made a capture before the time got away from us.

An intrepid effort from Josh’s rescuers with strategic changes like Dave covering Josh so he could advance into the rescue area more being just one. Sadly, we will be disappointed by the three we let get by us and only fully capturing two. Rich with his filling in for Ishan, assist and set piece earning him Man of the Rescue!

Jamie Doherty