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SELECTION COMMITTEE RECONVENES AFTER 45 YEAR HIATUS
With just two weeks of the season left, and CCC having played only 8 of their 14 games, a severe case of fixture congestion has arisen, with the result that this week sees three matches in as many days. At the height of the holiday season this could have been expected to cause major selection headaches, yet astonishingly, CCC has been overwhelmed with requests to play. This means that for the first time in modern times the team will not pick itself. "We've been deluged with requests," says club secretary Cliff Spencer, "my mailbox is chocca and my computer's crashed." The weight of mail dropping on Spencer's mat was such that his dog, Souness - who likes to sleep next to the front door - was knocked unconscious.
Meanwhile the club's selection committee had to reconvene in order to pick teams for the three games. "It's a completely new challenge," claimed skipper Simon Edwards, "you never think you'll actually have to leave someone out - it's the hardest thing to do." Luckily chairman of selectors Roger French came to the rescue. "Initially I tried to remember my old mathematical formulae, but that was too difficult and not at all relevant to the modern game," he explains. "Then I thought back to the old school technique of standing the players on the touchline and selecting the 11 fittest looking..." This technique, widely regarded as failsafe at school level, presented a new problem to French: "unfortunately CCC only has five players that look anything approaching fit. I'd have ended up sending 17 players home, including the skipper, and we'd have been seriously under strength on the park."
Finally, thanks to a chance discovery in his loft of The Observer's Book of Non PC Sports Team Selection (1961 edition), French hit upon the solution. "I've used eeny meeny miny mo for Monday, and ip dip dog shit for Wednesday", he says proudly. "Tuesday was a problem, but I think I'm going to draw names out of a hat for that."
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