A weekend of mixed fortunes…
Jessica entered the South East TAGB competition on Sunday but wasn’t able to bring home a trophy. She competed in the inidividual pattern and team pattern event. I went along to cheer her on but we both came away feeling the event was badly run and lacking in fairness. As in any sport there is no point in arguing with the referee or judges, but I witnessed a lot of mistakes during the day.
Perhaps the worst part of the competition is the weight restrictions on the categories. The weights for ladies are arranged so that the majority of people end up in the heavyweight class. It costs £10 to enter the sparring competition and if you are weighed and need to change category they will demand a £10 fine if you wish to stay in the competition. There is no allowance for height which plays an important part in a sport that has the highest points for a kick to the head. As a result a shorter person who is re-classified post weighing can pay £20 to be bashed on the head by someone much taller and heavier.
In the evening I played my first badminton match of the season…
C&P 5 Oakhill 4
My badminton partner and I have a tendancy to create large point leads in games before somehow self-destructing and losing. Our first game against Oakhill went exactly to form – we were 10-4 up in one game and still managed to lose i t 15-13.
A badminton match in the Ravensbourne league involves two teams each mad up of 3 pairs. Each pair plays all three pairs on the opposing team resulting in 9 “rubbers”. A rubber is the best of three games. Me and Chris lost our first two rubbers and as we went on for our final rubber the team scores were 4 rubbers each. Thankfully we managed to pull it out of the bag and win the final rubber in 2 games. Hopefully we can continue to improve as we play Catford Wanderers next Sunday.