While the sporting world enjoyed the annual blossoming of the all-terrain bocce season at Sir James Michell Park, President Brad took advantage of all the publicity to launch his book, “The AATBL Interviews”. Some commentators have suggested that Brad’s largesse is a transparent attempt to buy the affections of the voting public. As he handed out autographed copies and posed for photos, Brad was indeed open about seeking the votes of members in 2021. As the cameras whirred and clicked, he said, “A vote for me is a vote for good governance. Together we can wipe out the scourge of lymphoedema”.

The season-opener saw a hybrid teams-and-singletons format used for the first time. Some had predicted that the singletons would have the ascendancy, opining that a solo player will have the advantage of playing all the shots himself, whereas those in teams have to share the focus amongst themselves. So far, that hasn’t happened.

One factor that has prevented any useful analysis on that point so far is the fact that only one of the teams played with more than one player, and not even the two-player team had its full complement on the field. Whereas the singletons have to attend or cop a forfeit, those in teams can take RDOs. As long as at least one player attends the round, there is no forfeit for a team.

Big Pineapple comfortably dispatched RE 7-3, but he had a closer encounter with the Stingers, prevailing 7-6. Actually, he was against just one Stinger, Buzz Lightbeer, as Stella and Barney were absent, and said to be attending the Mindful Morris Dancing Workshop yet again.

In the Stingers’ other game, Buzz won 7-5, taking down Gonad, who was the sole representative of CBGBs. Whether Cannonball and Banker were also mindfully Morris dancing is unclear.

Gonad also came second in his other match, a nail-biting 6-7 loss to Psychoceramics. When Brad and Serge, comprising two thirds of Psychoceramics, realised that they were the only team playing with more than one player present, they agreed to plan things a little more carefully in future.

As seems to have been the pattern in recent years, RE has once again wound up on the bottom of the ladder after the first round, as he lost his other game 7-2 to Two Fingers of Scotch. Of course, the two fingers were only one, as SNHDT was absent, leaving the honours to SuperMario. Brad said that Stormboy’s absence note wasn’t easy to believe, and he asked “Why would anybody want to put bleach there anyway?”

Reg only had one game to play. He came as close as possible to winning 100% of his games on the day, losing that one game, 6-7, to One Finger of Scotch.

Motherchucker also had just the one game and it ended better for Psychoceramics than it did for him, as Serge and Brad prevailed 7-4.