Well, the first week of the season was greeted with a dry, but cold Wednesday evening and lots of interesting results across the 6 sections. What I will try to do is cover all of the sections this season individually, but for this, the first week of the league I will try to cover notably results, team and individual performances across all! Forgive me if I don’t highlight your team., your result or mention a particular member of your team, but there are 60 teams and that’s 480 players taking part each week so a few too many to cover all!!
Let me start with the Premier and A section where the defending Champions from 2024 Bystander A, now playing at and as Abingdon United A fell to a surprising 5-1 defeat at the hands of The Red Lion A despite the very best effort of skipper Steve Martin who top scored for United with 11 dolls. For the Lion Dean Bowler top scores with 8 dolls, but he was well supported by a solid all round team performance and the benefit of a handicap advantage of 3 dolls saw the Lion draw the first leg 18 apiece, but then take the next 2 legs 26-17 and 23-13.
Elsewhere in this section Abingdon Con Club (formerly Ab Utd@Con Club) got off to a winning start with a 4-2 victory over The Vine. Dave Dix hit the highest individual score of the night 14 dolls and Danny Hamilton claimed the first 6 of the season in his 12 dolls for The Vine. Dave was well supported by both Alex Chamberlain and Phil Adams who both hit double figures for the visitors and The Vines John Pownceby also scored 12 dolls.
There were also winning starts for Croft Nomads who entertained The Plum Pudding, for College Oak A against Stanford in the Vale FC and for Steventon Sports SC A who travelled to Berinsfield SC A. All of these were 4-2 wins. Leading scorers for the Croft was Steve Enock with 12 dolls, Terry Downes with 11 for the Plum. Jamie Knight followed his first leg “blob” with a second leg 6 for the Oak, the only other 6 of the night across all sections! Robert Glen top scored for the FC with 8 dolls.
In the B section there was a battle between two sides of particular interest to Andrew Fudge when the Earl of Abingdon a new venue for 2025 entertained The WADS bar who were playing in this section after winning the F section in 2024. It is fair to say that many of last year’s WADs side were more than a bit worried about their meteoric rise to the B section, but that didn’t seem to be a problem as they turned their first fixture into a resounding 6-0 win led by the Brown boys, Derrick with 10 dolls and Gareth with 9! For the Earl Mick Brown was the best performer with 7 dolls, but his 7 team mates could only manage 24 dolls between them over 3 legs!
Elsewhere in the B section The Fleur de Leys A were worthy winners beating Abingdon RBL 6-0 who collectively seemed to have an unusually bad night. Ian Heapy led the charge for the Fleur with 11 dolls.
Other results in this section saw wins for the Royal Oak, Abingdon United C and the Croft Bar.
The C section produced a couple of 6-0 results for the Bell Grove B whose captain Jason Lowe was the major contributor with 11 dolls against the Eight Bells and The Fox at Denchworth also were 6-0 victors over the North Star A. Brewery Tap, The Wheatsheaf and the Midget were all also first week winners in this section.
In the D section there were winning starts for College Oak B, the Prince of Wales, Harwellian A, The Plough, West Hanney and Steventon Sports SC B.
The E section brought an opening clash between 2 new sides to the league for this season when The Crown A entertained the George from Sutton Courtenay and they shared the points in a 3-3 draw.
There were, in this section, some good individual performances and despite a 5-1 loss Brian Bosley and Tom Ricketts both playing for Marcham Centre hit 9 and 8 dolls respectively against The Bystamnder but Bystanders skipper John Mackay with 10 dolls led Bystander to the victory. Elsewhere in the E section John Thomas and Spencer Walton both contributed 7 dolls but Gareth Thomas topped that with 9 dolls as Berinsfield B defeated The Black Horse 6-0.
The F section saw newbies Long Wittenham Athletic Club ( with a couple of former Plough Long Wittenham making the short move down the road0 got off to a flying start with maximum points victory over the Plough Appleton and Grove RFC matched that defeating the Lamb B.9 Obviously both the Sports teams had taken their pre season training a bit more seriously than the pubs!)
Not surprisingly so0 early in the season and with lots of teams featuring players who are new to our game there were a fair share of “blobbers”, but we are sure that tthose who failed to record a score in week 1 will soon be celebrating their first doll and going on to score many more over the season so don’t despair we have all been there!
It was noticeable that one ore two teams in the lower sections struggled to turn out full sides so don’t forget you can all add players to your teams to make certain you have enough players each week to cover those on holiday, working away or just unavailable all you need is to do is add their names your teams and they will be eligible to play straight away, but no transfers are allowed during the season if players have already played for 1 side .
Looking forward to week 2 and the promise of a warm Wednesday!
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