Mon, 9 April 2007
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Meet Adrian at Liverpool Street to get the train to Harlow to meet Shab so that we can drive cross-country to Caister. It briefly crosses my mind that we would save at least an hour by just getting the train to Great Yarmouth and I wouldn't have to listen to Shaggy's Greatest Hits for 3 hours. Console myself by realising that this won't even crack the top 3 of least direct routes taken to Caister. Shakey's route the first time I ever went, when he picked me up in Barking, drove to Rayleigh to pick up Jonny Lee and then drove to Orpington to pick up his mate Kev will probably never be beaten....
Arrive at Harlow, Shab running late, time saved by getting the train direct now more likely to be 1 ½ hours. Shab finally arrives in rented car. Shakey's move to rural Suffolk means a new way of getting to Caister after 10 years, however it makes a change to be able to pack kit in the boot without having to empty it of 6 pairs of personalised boots, 3 balls, the largest collection of R&B music outside of Harlem, 4 Nike kit bags and a tool box.
First rendition of Mr Boombastic......
Establish that Shakey is already at Caister & he tells me he will sort out the sleeping arrangements.
Relay that fact to Declan who is about 10 miles away, who reminds me that as ever, he will be sorting out the sleeping arrangements when he arrives.
For 10th successive year can't remember which road to take to bypass Lowestoft town centre, so stuck in rush hour traffic. Sing along to "It Wasn't Me" for the 3rd time.
Arrive, 6 of our 8 strong party are at the camp. Femi is coming direct from Ipswich, so is going to meet us at the game, unanimous agreement that as Keith hasn't paid and given his reliability record, that he won't turn up.
Keith arrives and hands over £85 to general disbelief.
Warming up at Waveney in preparation for the game against Moustache Hunters, who turn out to be Bournemouth Bears with fake moustaches on. They reached the QF's last year & despite the hilarious disguises, are not a bad side, with a genuine big man & a couple of decent guards. One of the referees for the game is Major Tim Brown of the Army, he's one of the Caister organisers and he sports a genuine Captain Slack-bladder style moustache. Conclude we might get some calls going our way.
Femi has borrowed Martin's alarm clock and turns up bang on time for the game. He misses Gary's team-talk, which as ever lasts about 5 minutes and focuses on the Erks never having lost a group game at Caister, work hard, enjoy playing for each other, don't pass to Shakey in the post etc. etc. Starting 5 are Me, Shakey, Shab, Keith, Declan. Mention to Keith that he may want to help out with the rebounding....
Up 29-9 at half-time. Shab hits four 3's in the first 7 minutes as he is left unmarked on the 3 point line against what must be one of the few teams in England who haven't seen him play, or at least if they have, they can't remember the small Asian fellow who shoots 3's.
Still up by 15-20, the second half is the Adrian & Femi show, as they come off the bench to put up plenty of shots and in Adrian's case foul out. With 1 ball handler short, the Moustache Hunters decide to press and in a bit of disarray we turn the ball over a couple of times. Gary calls a predictably upbeat time out, and Keith instructs the big men to clear off down court to let the guards dribble up & beat the pressure. As instructed I clear off up court, Keith beats the initial pressure and dribbles into a trap at the half-way line at which point he throws a ball 3 feet over me. Predictably, this is my fault.
Game won 45-29, with Keith (15) and Shab (12) top scorers. 3 pints of Stella in the bar and drive home, followed by a few more pints in the new Caister venue (Neptunes is open to the public this year) to come.
20 minutes into queuing for the first round of the night in the new Club venue. People in front are ordering £50 rounds to avoid queuing again, which is not helping the situation. Declan & Gary are predictably understanding about this scenario.
After eating the traditional Caister breakfast of sausages, beans and scrambled egg that will take (me - as it's my job again for the 11th successive year) about 5 washes to get off the bottom of the pan, we're ready to go. I mildly protest about not being offered any other chalet job options. Unfortunately the response "your job is to stand in the corner and shut up" leads me to conclude that my chances of being offered a catering position are negligible.
After a particularly energetic warm-up, the main consolation is that our opponents look at least as hung over as we are. Although given our team includes Shab, who doesn't drink, Femi, who barely does and Keith who only drinks slightly more, we are not in bad shape. As I assume my usual seat on the bench, I started to muse at length on absent friends......and Church, who is missing his first Caister since the Erks started coming. The 9am games were never really Church's forte, given that he'd usually had 12 pints and half a bottle of the cheapest spirits he could find (he's a quantity not quality man) and the first half of these games were usually spent with him breathing out of his arse and forcing lean-in shots off the dribble looking (in vain) for a foul. However given that this team has the best scoring guard rotation we've brought down here for years in Shab, Adrian & Keith, it's ironic that we're missing the bloke who carried a host of less talented teams over the past few years. Actually I condensed that thought into about 15 seconds and then Femi pulled down the first 3 rebounds & I completely forgot about the clumsy oaf.
Not a good start, mainly for the game of basketball, as the 2 teams combine for 3 airballs and 6 turnovers early on, and after 5 minutes we lead 7-4. Then Shakey hits a jump shot and we burst into action to take a 15-6 lead. We then go completely to sleep and despite a couple of Shab treys, they lead 22-21 on the back of 6 quick points from a bloke with a hairier back than Gary.
I seem to have heard this half-time tirade somewhere before.......
Suitably inspired by our team-talk, Adrian comes out and hits 9 points in 3 minutes and they score 2 field goals in the first 8 minutes of the half as we pull out to 43-27. With the game won, I get the opportunity for an extended run-out and the game concludes with the hairy back bloke backing me down into the post, pulling an up & under move and drawing an "and one". On the plus side, the ensuing debate about my defence means that we don't get the usual clichés about hanging tough, digging deep etc. etc.
No game until 3pm so back to the camp for a kip.
I nearly fall asleep 37 times before being awoken by Gary each time, shouting to Dec, calling Anne-Marie, playing his MP3 players etc. etc.
Suitably enlivened we return to Waveney to play Steve Ogunjimi and Brian Moore's team "Too Much Game Returns". Fortunately, Steve and Brian did indeed have too many games, as they were by this time on the way up to Sheffield for Leopards' play-off game up there, so we were left to play Jamie Whittaker, Junior Clarke and some Spaniard/Mexican/Eastern European blokes. The team debate has moved onto MVP awards....with Herdy having claimed in training last week that he should be counted amongst Erkenwald's list of MVP winners, the rationale for this being that he was the MVP in the Mid-Essex play-offs "in the first year when they didn't have one". He got a sympathetic ear for that theory.....
Too Much Game are an experienced team, but really all they have is a Spanish bloke who is very quick and a couple of blokes who can hit an open 3. That's 2 more than we have at the moment though, so despite a host of open looks, we trail 19-14 at the break. Keith in particular can't hit a barn door.
After a sane & rational assessment of the situation from Coach Glennard - to the effect of "we can't possibly miss that many shots in the second half", we come out and Keith & Shab between them hit 7 outside shots in the first 6 minutes. We lead 35-23 and they never have enough offense to come back.
We win 44-35 and barring a hammering from Richmond, we've qualified as Group winners.
The conversation in the bar turns to the rebounding merits of the squad. Declan notes that Dennis Rodman used to study film to identify where players typically missed shots so that he could be in the right place to pick up the board. It is suggested that Shakey does something similar, however he's looking for the wrong spots, as it's uncanny how few rebounds he picks up per minute on court. Femi has no such problems, he's a one man rebounding machine & is presumably enjoying actually being given the ball on occasions instead of watching Joe Matthews dribble for 10 seconds and then shoot.
Richmond have a 6 man squad and look absolutely knackered. Predictably Gary & Declan build them up so that as we take the court, we could be playing the 1997 Chicago Bulls, albeit with a little fat Scottish fellow instead of MJ....
We race out into an early lead, and despite a slight alarm with me & Shakey being overrun at the back of a 3-2 zone for a few minutes (presumably Gary was just seeing if 2 years ago against Running Renegades was just a freak occurrence), they can't stop Keith, or less predictably Gary, who knocks down a trey(!!) and picks up 6 points on the break.
30-19 at half-time becomes 54-35 and the game finishes with their number 15 backing Declan down into the post and Dec picking up an unsportsmanlike foul for dragging him down. It's fortunate for Dec that the number 15 wasn't Holgar Marsen as per the scoresheet (Richmond presumably saving on EB registration fees...) as he's about 10 stone heavier. Given that we're 19 up with seconds to go, I find myself wondering if there is any situation in which Dec would decide to turn the other cheek in the face of provocation (the bloke was dropping his shoulder in to be fair).
I remember Dec giving the outside threat to a 15 year old at Forest and conclude probably not.
The post-match conversation in the bar centres around Femi's second half performance, where he produced an array of hitherto unseen post moves scoring 12 points, all on ex-Erk Nick "Sssssssonofabitch" Dewey. Erkenwald is a tough school, so obviously he isn't congratulated on his offensive showing, rather accused of being a garbage time gunner.
Worryingly the conversation has moved on to another post-game topic and my high post pivot move is being dissected.
Whilst waiting for a pizza, Dec demonstrates the move for the 13th time in just over an hour. It's now been christened the okey-cokey - right foot in, right foot out, in, out, in, out etc...etc..
After watching Match of the Day, we leave to go out to the Club, clearly exhausted after his extensive okey-cokeying (and slaughtered), Declan decides to stay in. Nobody will believe this, least of all Victoria!
We arrive just in time to catch the draw. As mentioned in the main report, we are one of the 2 unlucky group winners who have to play an extra elimination game. Unfortunately it hasn't dawned on any of the organisers that the 2 unlucky winners should be kept apart in the draw, therefore we end up playing fellow group winners Lasers. The organisers are pre-occupied dealing with an appeal on the group finishings, so by the time somebody understands the issue, it's too late.
Due to Declan's absence Kirsty Clark has little competition for the "Kirsty Clark award for drunkest person in the Club on Saturday night", and she wins for the 10th successive year. Where would Caister be without these traditions... 1am Lasers arrive from the lap-dancing Club. They are absolutely hammered, so either we'll win tomorrow morning easily, or it will be a physical battle between 2 hung-over teams.
5 minutes in it's 7-7 and 10 fouls have been called already, guess which type of game it is. Fortunately, whilst the Lasers are losing their head, we keep ours to pull away to 17-7,
Although we lead 22-15, it's a bit tight and tense. You won't find a harder working team than Lasers at Caister, and what they lack in structure, they make up for in effort and having a bench of about 20.
Shab has hit a couple of treys and we're still hanging on, although they cut the lead to 27-26 and then 32-30. Colin Rhoome, their big man who used to play for Coventry has started hitting outside shots, as has another big bloke who was about the 13th person to enter from their bench. And Femi has just picked up his 3rd foul, we need him to stay in the game, as we're struggling on the boards a bit.
Femi fouls out trying to avoid making a stand and Shakey enters to plug the gap on the boards. Shake immediately picks up his first defensive rebound of the weekend, as with Lasers crashing the boards he can't escape to the wrong position in time. He immediately follows this with a turnover and then a foul though, so equilibrium is restored. He betters this next possession as he picks up an offensive board and then travels immediately. Gary is suitably impressed.
We're hanging on, a Shab drive (you know you're getting desperate when Shab scores not from a 3 pointer) and a Pringle jumper keep our noses in front. However Rhoome keeps hitting shots and then shouting a lot, which is hardly reducing the tension. Inside the last minute Shake bulldozers his way in and gets fouled with us 2 up. He makes the first shot and misses the second, giving them a shot to tie.
Actually, they get 3 shots to tie, as they pick up 2 offensive boards, which further impresses Gary, however fortunately nobody makes one, so we win 41-38
The post game team talk veers somewhat from Dave Titmuss's appreciation sandwich. Although, only in the fact that there is no appreciation. Everybody was very naughty for not following the coaches instructions and we were lucky to win is the gist of it. Which is probably a fair comment. Shake however, is not impressed by such negativity, being a glass half full type of person, and makes this point to Gary & Dec.
Several minutes of abuse about his rebounding and hand speed later, Shake is outside sulking and I'm trying to check where our next game is whilst 2 senior members of the team perform the okey-cokey.
Still at Denes, our next game is against Group Winners Tolworth, who feature Kingston Wildcats guard Chris Jeremiah who has torched us numerous times in the past. Dec & Gary pass the time by okey-cokeying and speculating on whether Shakey's hand speed has been slowed further by nocturnal rubbing activities.
Erkenwald basketball is in safe hands as Shab, Adrian & Femi are stretching and practising free-throws & Keith is as ever on the phone. Dec is refining his/my okey-cokey move.
Still no Tolworth team, but seconds away from defaulting they turn up, and we go straight into the game. In these circumstances, instead of blowing teams out early on, we typically mess around, allow them to get warm and then get into a run & gun game. Fortunately on this occasion, they are not at the races & we play really well. Shab hits 5 treys, Femi picks up every rebound, Keith is unstoppable, and from 15-7, we go a 25-0 run to make it 40-7.
Chris Jeremiah hits a trey to pull it back to 40-10, however at 47-10, he's had enough & he wraps Shab up to foul out. The game ends in disappointment however, as when Keith calls a time-out to put the 1-1-1-1-1 zone on for the final minute, Tolworth were clearly ready and they score 5 points without reply to bring the final score to 57-26
We arrive at Waveney to find out we're playing the Army at 2pm in the semis, in contrast to our 6 game, double 9 am start, they had a leisurely breakfast and then had a quarter final against Baddow Eagles, who missed their first 15 shots. Not that we're bitter about the draw or anything.... The other semi-final is the Met Police, who have been re-enforced by BBL player Marcus Knight who turned up this morning, against Too Much Game Returns, Steve Ogunjimi and Brian Moore having returned from Leopards blow-out defeat at Sheffield for the important business at Caister.
Semi-Final, see detailed report separately.