Despite the fact that C, our second daughter, had been born in May Faith obviously saw how much I had enjoyed the 1984 Match and raised no objections whatsoever when I somewhat carefully broached the possibility of doing the same thing again. Fortunately young C liked to sleep at night rather more than her older sister had at that age and this may well have tipped the scales.
Once again John borrowed the school bus but this time we travelled down to Weymouth during the Thursday afternoon, parking, as I recall, on waste ground at the rear of the Crown Hotel which by the time we next visited in 1990 had become the car park to a large d-i-y store.
Arriving on the Thursday we were able to send John to the traditional Captains meeting at which the match rules, conditions and venue were discussed. This left the rest of us at a loose end in the bar and it was here that Geoff began to earn his legendary reputation as a player of fruit machines. Unfortunately his skills in this regard were more along the lines of quickly getting the hang of the rules for each machine rather than actually taking money OUT of them! After the meeting we went out with several other groups on a tour of the harbour side pubs and then returned to the hotel where the night porter kept the ‘residents’ bar open until the early hours of the morning.
I do not remember very much about the actual match (not because of the night before!) but I think we astounded everyone by coming in 4th or possibly even 3rd. I do recall that we did make it to Chesil beach this time, parking at Abbotsbury. There was quite a large tide running and I recall finding it very difficult to cast into the large breakers. There was no possibility of spotting a bite – you cast out and reeled in 10 minutes later to see if you had anything!
It was slowly becoming apparent to us comparative newcomers that there was a kind of brooding enmity between the Maidstone and Norwich teams, particularly the two captains, Colin P of Norwich and Paul D of Maidstone. If Norwich accidentally (or deliberately – we could not tell) infringed or misinterpreted any of the rules it seemed to us that Paul would not hesitate in drawing this to the attention of other teams. Similarly Colin would never miss an opportunity to put an adverse slant on what he considered unfair ‘professionalism’ on the part of Maidstone. This usually related to Paul’s practice of taking a whole week off work prior to the match in order to fish different parts of the likely venue at different states of tide to give his team a good idea of what to expect. This was thought ‘unsporting’ by Colin (and others) and perhaps not surprisingly gave rise to slanderous remarks about exactly when the fish Maidstone were weighing in had been caught! Most of us, however, while feeling a little envious, felt that this was exactly what we would have done given the time and the money.
In the case of this match the story was put about that the Maidstone team had collected their winning catch by fishing into the Fleet, the calm arm of salt water separating Chesil beach from the ‘mainland’ thus avoiding the tackle losses that the rest of us were suffering. It was maintained by some that this constituted fishing ‘off-peg’ (i.e. cheating) but it should be made clear in their defence that not only did they not fish in the Fleet but that it would not have mattered if they had as this was a ‘roving’ match with no fixed pegs. In fact, I am assured by David T that they fished ‘outwards’ to the sea, albeit a long way out of sight of the rest of us, at a spot that Paul had selected in his practice sessions. While only a few people commented openly either way I am ashamed to say that most of us simply believed what it suited us to believe in order to account for our not winning!
These niggling little disputes gradually got worse over the years, culminating in 1992, as I will relate in due course.
At the Friday night dinner, after the presentation of trophies, the organiser, Basil S, then of the Barclays International office at 168 Fenchurch Street, London, announced that it had been decided to move our match around the country a bit more in coming years, the Sports Club having gained the impression that Weymouth was a long way from all teams involved, giving rise to higher than necessary expenses claims. Basil assured us that he had pointed out that wherever we held the competition someone was bound to have a higher claim, counteracting the lower claims of the ‘host’ region. I am not totally convinced of the veracity of Basil’s story to the effect that the person from the Sports Club had asked, in all seriousness, why this competition could not be held somewhere central – like Birmingham!
Basil’s alleged reply was to the effect that he did not think that the tide came in that far!
