Glory Days...

The Teesside Pirates were in Liverpool on Sunday trying to add more trophies to their collection.

Things didn't start out well though....

The story starts on Saturday 17th March aka St. Patrick’s Day, as you would expect the union bar was packed with students, all getting drunk. My plan was to get in at about 7pm have a few pints and celebrate a mates birthday, with the intention of being in bed by about 11pm. What I didn't expect however was the bar to still be giving away the big Guinness top hats (last year they were all out after a couple of hours). The deal works something like this, one pint of Guinness gets you a ticket, get four tickets and exchange them for a hat. Simple. So I buy two pints (not at the same time) and enjoy them, the third ticket is given to me (nice) while I'm given a flat fourth pint (minus the ticket) by someone who had to leave, I buy the fourth pint get the ticket and exchange them for a hat, happy days. I'd got what I came for and it was gone 10pm, I should really have started off home, but alas I spot some mates from my previous course in bar one thing leads to another and before you know it, I've gone and brought my self another pint...

I end up crashing into bed at about midnight and my alarm is set for 4am, happy days...

4am comes around my first alarm goes off, I get out of bed turn it off and go back to sleep, expecting to be woken up again in five minutes by the second alarm...

I wake up later, no alarm is sounding, confused I look at the time, 5:30, I've only gone and overslept by an hour and a half. Quickly getting dressed during which I get a phone call asking where I am (as we were meant to meet up at 5am), I tell the guys that I overslept and that they should come and pick me up, as it'd be quicker than me walking to the meeting point. I quickly do a half-assed job of my teeth and hair, in the middle of which I get another phone call saying that the guys are just outside. I quickly get all my stuff together get it into the car then spend another minute printing the application form off (note to self: Don't put stuff off!). Finally we're away, back to the meeting point to pick up the last player, who also overslept.

6am and we're finally on our way to Liverpool, I've never been so glad to allow an extra hour for travel!

Apart from a strange diversion that led us in the wrong direction we still managed to get to the alley before anyone else, even beating the staff!

So yeah a good start to the day...

So the Liverpool Trios... it's an usual tournament, in most tournaments you play teams in sets of 3 games and play 9 games. However at Liverpool it's more akin to a football tournament, you start off in groups of 5 with the top two teams from each group going through to the next round, plus the losing team with the highest pinfall, then groups of 3, top team from each group going to the next round along with the team with the highest pinfall for a straight out knockout.

Finally at 10am we started bowling.

And for me it was a good start scoring a 187, and we won the first game, yay for us. We also won the second game, despite me only getting a 148 game. The third game was ours as well thanks to me getting a great 205 game, meaning that my first 3 game series of the day was 540 giving me an average of 180, oh happy days. Onto the fourth game and we were out played and out lucked the other team hitting a bit of form, my score for this game, 153, looks like it's going to be one of those days. Last game of the first round and we need to win to make sure we went through and with me scoring well again with a 178 and the guys hitting form as well, we beat our opposition.

Job done we were through to the second round, a break for the lanes to get re-oiled and to get some lunch (Good old McDonalds!) and we were off again. First game 183 good but not good enough to win, we were up against it now, needing to win the next games to stay in and disaster, we were up against the same team that beat us in the last round and just like last time they hit some form and got some luck, annoyingly we would have beaten them if we had played them in the last game! Of course my scoring a 148 didn't help matters. So we were effectively out of the tournament, now all that was left was to go out in style and have some fun, which we did for the most part, myself scoring a decent 190 game, although it wasn't enough and we lost.

We stuck around till the 3rd round teams were announced just in case but alas luck was not on our side that day and the 5 tournament winning streak came to an end. Never-the-less it was still a good, especially for me, getting an average of 174 for the day, a respectful tournament average and more akin to what I'm used to.

The trip home was quiet to start with but as we neared the smog central that is Teesside we started to cheer up a bit with a bit of a sing along and ending with good old 20 questions. Not a bad day for £35 now all I have to do is get the money from the team mates!

If I bowl on Wednesday like I bowled at Liverpool then I think we can say that I'm back baby!

This is Benji Dude, asking you to take a walk in my shoes.