OBGS - South East Cup

A bright, warm day with a light breeze, a well-prepared golf course in beautiful condition, an ever welcoming and hospitable golf club; what more could we have asked for? Well, an urgent flight to secure a house, unexpected final wedding rehearsals, unavoidable work commitments and a missed flight due to visa technicalities did deprive us of the company of some but the ten OBs who arrived had a great day. They were:

David Mainwaring, Ian Wilson, Steve Brown, Dylan Kelly, Kevin Noble, David Layton, Llyr Raw-Rees, Steffan Raw-Rees, Max Proctor and Alfred Smith.

The gathering of familiar faces was enhanced by the welcome return of Steve Brown, who sparked memories of golfing days with Martin Nichols, and the debut attendances of Max Proctor, playing his first round for several years, and David Mainwaring, who left CCB in 1961 and made a 2 ½ hour drive from Kent “just to see what was going on and who turned up”.

The annual handicap discussions were, as usual, entertaining, but with an unusual general erring on the ‘don’t want to be seen as a bandit’ side. Time passed quickly and the general babble of ‘catching up’ and reminiscing over coffee and rolls was disrupted by David’s request for a quick sharpener before teeing-off, which saw a collective glance at watches and a rush to the bar!

The course is tricky for those not in the know, which all, bar Dylan, were not. David’s impressive, consistent tee shots were undone by vagaries of line, bounce and run, which Dylan, helpfully, and invariably, told him how to avoid after he had played his shots (*). Alfred drove through fairways, over blind doglegs and into greenside bunkers that the rest of us couldn’t reach – mixed feelings there, perhaps?! Max and I enjoyed a pleasant walk with good company, thankful that we connected with the ball well enough in the right direction often enough to remember that we enjoy playing the game.

Everyone played well enough to return to the bar in good spirits and thirsty. All praised the condition of the course and most lamented over a lack of knowledge of the layout; promising themselves to remember it better for next time (just like they did the last time we played here!).

The post-match meal and rehydration was briefly interrupted, a few drinks in, when we were invited to enter a ‘guess the weight’ competition for a fortified fruit cake to raise funds for the Princess Alice Hospice event being held by a lady member in the next room. Being the only one with cash, Steve saved the day by making a team donation. The banter that followed, between us and with the lady member was hysterical as we floundered about with farcical weight and unit comparisons to make vaguely sensible guesses (you probably had to be there ?!). For completeness's sake, for those that were there, I have been informed that the cake weighed 1,098 g and the winning guess was 1,096 g; which was, almost needless to say, not one of ours (though, in fairness, one of us was pretty close)!

The day’s golf scoring was reasonable, with all but four being in the ‘happy enough; respectable’ category; Max and I were in the ‘happy enough; some good shots, nice day’ category and two were in the ‘very happy with that’ category. The results prompted a bit of scrutiny and confirmation of the cards, as only one point separated Steff and Dylan, with Dylan’s local knowledge proving a crucial difference between two solid rounds of golf and his 38 points over Steff’s 37. Really, well done both.

As an additional bit of fun, the points scored by respective schoolhouses were collated (which, now it has been done, might not just be a ‘bit of fun’ next year and could be incorporated within the Heads Cup next month?). The total scores were:

SHB: 63    SHR: 24    Donaldsons: 46    St Davids: 29    Orchard: 118

As it turned out, all present, with the honourable exception of David, a cricketer of note, were (ex)rugby players and so, naturally, the ‘forwards’ and ‘backs’ scores were totalled:

Forwards: 38    Backs: 210

This was amended when Alfred mentioned that he had ‘maybe played blindside once, when someone was injured’ (*). This was seized on by Dylan (*), the only other forward in the group, and then he proceeded to average out the scores per house and position, because this was ‘the only fair way to decide things’, and found that the Forwards average of 35 points beat the Backs’ average 26 points and Blue’s average of 32 points beat the rest, meaning that, after Dylan had done all the calculations, he had a clean sweep of all competitions.

There was an obvious, glaring and sad absence in the house scores with no de Winton or Donnies representatives being present – we would very much like to change that, even if with wives, husbands, partners, sisters, brothers or other relatives of Old Breconians who identify as, or want to attend as, representatives of De Winton. The Heads Cup at Cradoc next month would be a suitable time and place to do it.

NB (*) – denotes creative licence in order to never let the truth get in the way …..