To Sandown with Il Presidente Bob, Chairman Mao and the fast disappearing Alison. It's League Dinner time. Wickman is looking forward to a pleasant evening with friends if not the tedium of another awards ceremony at Sandown. At least in previous years (admittedly Fullers years) there were a couple of almost off colour comedians to liven up the evening and Wickman has fond memories of Paul Allott.
There's no real ale (come on Shepherd Neame - surely some of your fantastic Late Red or a pint or two of Spitfire could have been rustled up?) which puts Wickman in a slightly less than generous frame of mind. The food isn't too bad although at £35 a pop something slightly more exciting than a profit making soup could have been assembled for the starter. And as Alison pointed out (only someone who is as svelte as her would have noticed) there was no chocolate with the coffee. The reasonable bottle of red (retails in most off licences for about £8) had been scandalously marked up to £26.
Hearts sink as Henry Kelly is confirmed as guest speaker. We're informed that he is passionate about cricket so hearts are slightly buoyed. Sadly though the evening descends into anarchy as he seems to be off his game somewhat. The awards are handed out with him burbling along and failing to pronounce many of the team names. Handling a terrible job terribly Kelly then attempts to restore order by asking for respect for the winners from those assembled. This goes down badly with the crowd who are less than impressed with him turning up late in the first place.
There's then a terribly compered Q&A session with the Surrey hierarchy of Gus someone, Chris Adams and Ian Salisbury. None is, shall we say, a natural speaker. Kelly reads out a ridiculous question about a left handed 12 year old (Wickman thinks) and the room is nonplussed and begins to talk amongst itself as a host of rubbish questions are answered badly by the by now slightly worried panel.
The Q&A session goes horribly wrong. Adams tries to play the respect card by telling us that our brave boys are fighting in other countries. Somehow Kelly accuses the audience of being drunk. Someone else asks why Surrey encourages the best colts to join central training and then tries to poach them to better clubs. There is uproar when the question is ducked. There is some heckling cum sledging and then someone borrows the mic to ask how much Kelly is being paid. He asks the questioner how much he has had to drink and the room has been lost for good.
There is an attempt to restore order but things have gone too far. The organisers failing to apologise for serving up some obviously un-rehearsed tosh, an attempt to get Kelly back to the stage is met with little enthusiasm (a show of hands is demanded to coax the by now highly embarrassed guest speaker back to the stage - five hands go up from 500). The evening descends into a post-mortem and carriages arrive at 11.30.
Apparently the Fullers lot have booked Aggers. Wickman quite fancies a bit of that. Anyone who has played cricket at a decent level, can talk cricket, interview Lily Allen and who tweets more than Wickman must be all right. But Wickman will be thinking at least twice before going to another Surrey League dinner. Wickman spoke to some veterans of the event (they'd picked up a major award but only three of them came to the awards - we pick up second place and 30 of us turn up). They said "this year was really bad, a bit of a shame that Kelly wasn't allowed to speak, but its this bad every year".
Let's face it. 95% of the audience has been at work all week. They want a couple of beers, a vat of wine and a good laugh. As about 60 per cent of the tickets are purchased as part of our membership of the League - so to an extent we have to go to offset the cost to the club - the evening needs to be well organised, hosted and delivered. Most of us work in jobs and industries where the shambolic organisation and ridiculous compereing would have cost us our jobs. There was no good laugh on Friday.
Maybe some of the catcalls, ironic clapping and bronx cheers will convince the organisers to pay someone to do the job properly next year. Or post out the trophies. They may never get there with industrial relations as they are but it saves the red faces all round that we suffered on Friday.
Hampton Wick Royal Cricket Club * 1863 - 2013 * 150 Glorious Seasons
Monday, 12 October 2009
Wickman's Travels and Travails
To Sandown with Il Presidente Bob, Chairman Mao and the fast disappearing Alison. It's League Dinner time. Wickman is looking forward to a pleasant evening with friends if not the tedium of another awards ceremony at Sandown. At least in previous years (admittedly Fullers years) there were a couple of almost off colour comedians to liven up the evening and Wickman has fond memories of Paul Allott.
There's no real ale (come on Shepherd Neame - surely some of your fantastic Late Red or a pint or two of Spitfire could have been rustled up?) which puts Wickman in a slightly less than generous frame of mind. The food isn't too bad although at £35 a pop something slightly more exciting than a profit making soup could have been assembled for the starter. And as Alison pointed out (only someone who is as svelte as her would have noticed) there was no chocolate with the coffee. The reasonable bottle of red (retails in most off licences for about £8) had been scandalously marked up to £26.
Hearts sink as Henry Kelly is confirmed as guest speaker. We're informed that he is passionate about cricket so hearts are slightly buoyed. Sadly though the evening descends into anarchy as he seems to be off his game somewhat. The awards are handed out with him burbling along and failing to pronounce many of the team names. Handling a terrible job terribly Kelly then attempts to restore order by asking for respect for the winners from those assembled. This goes down badly with the crowd who are less than impressed with him turning up late in the first place.
There's then a terribly compered Q&A session with the Surrey hierarchy of Gus someone, Chris Adams and Ian Salisbury. None is, shall we say, a natural speaker. Kelly reads out a ridiculous question about a left handed 12 year old (Wickman thinks) and the room is nonplussed and begins to talk amongst itself as a host of rubbish questions are answered badly by the by now slightly worried panel.
The Q&A session goes horribly wrong. Adams tries to play the respect card by telling us that our brave boys are fighting in other countries. Somehow Kelly accuses the audience of being drunk. Someone else asks why Surrey encourages the best colts to join central training and then tries to poach them to better clubs. There is uproar when the question is ducked. There is some heckling cum sledging and then someone borrows the mic to ask how much Kelly is being paid. He asks the questioner how much he has had to drink and the room has been lost for good.
There is an attempt to restore order but things have gone too far. The organisers failing to apologise for serving up some obviously un-rehearsed tosh, an attempt to get Kelly back to the stage is met with little enthusiasm (a show of hands is demanded to coax the by now highly embarrassed guest speaker back to the stage - five hands go up from 500). The evening descends into a post-mortem and carriages arrive at 11.30.
Apparently the Fullers lot have booked Aggers. Wickman quite fancies a bit of that. Anyone who has played cricket at a decent level, can talk cricket, interview Lily Allen and who tweets more than Wickman must be all right. But Wickman will be thinking at least twice before going to another Surrey League dinner. Wickman spoke to some veterans of the event (they'd picked up a major award but only three of them came to the awards - we pick up second place and 30 of us turn up). They said "this year was really bad, a bit of a shame that Kelly wasn't allowed to speak, but its this bad every year".
Let's face it. 95% of the audience has been at work all week. They want a couple of beers, a vat of wine and a good laugh. As about 60 per cent of the tickets are purchased as part of our membership of the League - so to an extent we have to go to offset the cost to the club - the evening needs to be well organised, hosted and delivered. Most of us work in jobs and industries where the shambolic organisation and ridiculous compereing would have cost us our jobs. There was no good laugh on Friday.
Maybe some of the catcalls, ironic clapping and bronx cheers will convince the organisers to pay someone to do the job properly next year. Or post out the trophies. They may never get there with industrial relations as they are but it saves the red faces all round that we suffered on Friday.
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2 comments:
I was there and your account of the evening is very good - at least for the period we stayed because we high-tailed it straight after the awards. The irony of Kelly castigating us after showing up late, in a 'tired and emotional' state (he alluded to the traffic from North London being shocking...surely he didn't....), unprepared and unable to show resepct he demanded of others by reading out the team names correctly was astonishing. I'm caught between regretting not staying to see HK et al squirm and being happy I left before any more of my time was wasted. HK may be a funny guy in the bar but what a shocking performance that night. I'm not convinced he knew it was a cricket dinner rather than a rugby one at first. Surely he waived his fee or at least donated it to charity?
Anon - a swift get away after the awards was the choice of a champion. Wickman hopes that with time for reflection Surrey will do the decent thing and make sure next year's awards are a more enjoyable for everyone, not just the top table. Wickman too wishes Kelly had been given a chance to earn his corn but sadly by that time not enough to stick his hand up...
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