Well boys, the odds were most definitely stacked against us this week. With our courageous Captain still sidelined with Minge-my-cockel and our wicket keeper Steven Patrick Scally out with yet another injury sustained this time while playing Electronic Battleships; at the time of writing this it is believed that Steve has sprained his vasteferans whilst trying to sink his opponents last and not to mention largest ship, the Aircraft Carrier. It was alleged that the move that he was about to pull off was so cunning that it would have out witted Captain Cunning Pants, King of the Cunning people on national being cunning day (National cunning day for those that are interested is next Tuesday or next Wednesday if you live in Tasmania!)

Unfortunately Steve had to forfeit due to this rather untimely and inconvenient injury and will now be unable to represent Atwell in the southern districts You Beaut Bonza Aussie Battleships Tournament, held next Sunday at Atwell RSL, behind the local Mexican eatery known simply as Dirty Sanchez's Dirty Mexican Eatery. Get well soon champ, and please, on behalf of the team, please give up these extreme sports…?

Anyway. The game. We were scheduled to play at 6pm. We had managed to fill one of the vacant spots with young Iron Jay and at the toss off the coin (still awaiting the arrival of Matty D, whom we believe was late due to the fact that he was having his legs waxed!) we had only six men. Iron Jay had the responsibility of Captaining the side thrust upon his young but solid shoulders (don't get carried away Champ. When you've got deltoids like your big brother you'll understand!) In an extremely bold move Jay won the toss and elected to field with only six men. Fortune favors the brave and all that…

For the first two overs we fielded like jets, keeping our opponents to only four runs. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for the third and fourth overs, where we allowed the opposition's opening batsmen to score twenty seven runs, and thus undo all the hard work we had done in the first couple of overs, to have their first pair leave the field feeling pretty good about themselves on thirty one runs.

At this point Matty D turned up and bolstered our numbers to seven. Realising that we had just let an almost certain match winning start slip away we raised the bar. (No not that bar Matty!)

The next pair managed only nine runs, and were kept in check by some fantastic bowling by Iron Jay and Carlos the postal worker Doohan. The third pair where also uninspiring and only managed to notch up seventeen runs. At this point we had our sites on a low run chase, but were given a bit of a scare by some aggressive batting by at least one member of the final pair. The other guy should have walked off the field sideways, the useless Crab! But to his partners credit, he managed to score most of their fifteen runs. And so we were sent into bat chasing the comfortable total of seventy-three for victory.

First to bat were Marvelous (you late leg waxing poof!) Matty D and Davo (everyone's favorite octogenarian!). Both batted well. Matty D batted with his usual limp wristed but somewhat technical style and Davo…Well Davo batted very well, even if there was still a hint of old Mike Gatting at times, but none the less, he was influential in our teams opening partnership of thirty runs.

Next to bat were acting Captain Iron Jay and Carl (the Postal Worker!) Doohan. Both batted extremely well and with some clever running, and not to mention equally clever stroke play, they managed to amass twenty five runs to put our score at the halfway mark at fifty five.

Mark "Freakshow" Myers and myself, Robbo, were up next. Now… Freakshow likes to belt the life out of the ball, and I… Well I just go out and hope for the best. But despite the odd pairing things went very well. Freakshow was in fine form and I… Well there was the very rare site of myself striking a beautifully timed seven straight over the bowler's head. (But we won't go into that…) We managed to put on an extra twenty nine runs, and so with the fourth and final pair due to bat we had already passed the oppositions score and where sitting comfortably on eighty four runs.

With only seven players, the opposition had to choose one of us to bat again. They chose Iron Jay. This would be their final undoing. Both Bruce and James batted sensationally. Bruce even came within a whisker of scoring his first seven ever, but was thwarted by the oppositions evil back net fielder, who on stopping the ball just short of the back net was drowned in a flurry of abuse from our injured Captain Dutchy, who had come down to watch the game despite the nasty case of Minge-my-cockel he was still fighting. Jay and Bruce put on the highest score for the night of thirty-nine runs and that left us on the most triumphant score of one hundred and twenty three. The end result was Dutchy's Wink 123 over Yep 72. Man of the match was a close decision but went to Iron Jay for his fantastic all round effort as Captain, and for both his unfaultable bowling and batting.

Well-done boys.

Robbo