AFTER landing the Premiership crown in the recently completed summer season, last Thursday the Plough (Wolvercote) got their winter campaign off to a similarly successful start with victory over defending champions and fellow housemate, the Ploughman’s Bunch!

In a tight contest, with no more than five points in it all evening, the Plough edged out their great rivals 85-80, in what proved to be the highest aggregate scoreline of week one.

Flush from their last gasp achievement in bagging the ‘Film/Literature and TV’ Tabletop seven days earlier, the Royal Blenheim ‘A’ (Oxford City) amassed a hugely impressive total of 96 in comprehensively outplaying their stablemate, the Blenheim ‘B’ (aka ‘The Young ‘Un’s’), their response a mere 51. The ‘A’ team will face a much sterner examination next time out when they take on the Bunch!

Results may have gone to form in the elite league but there were a couple of surprises elsewhere, not least at the Green Road Club (Kidlington), where the hosts, resounding winners of Section One from the summer, were soundly beaten by the White Hart (Eynsham), 70-83. When they are able to field their strongest unit, the latter are a handful for anyone but inconsistency in selection has long proved their Achilles heel. Cure that and they could have the West at their mercy.

Providing their own slice of giant killing, Captain Conway’s Black Swan (East Oxford) overcame the Eight Bells (Long Crendon), formerly the Green Dragon (Haddenham), 78-73. No mean accomplishment this, given that the vanquished suffered just three losses in the entire 2013/14 season.

The opening round of fixtures also produced a number of tight finishes, none moreso perhaps than that in Summertown where hosts, the North Oxford Conservative Club, by failing to identify the two films which secured Steven Spielberg his brace of Best Director Oscars in their last question, allowed their visitors, the King’s Arms (Wheatley), to sneak home 75-74.

In an equally thrilling encounter in Chipping Norton, the Blue Boar Bees, reigning champions in the North, squeezed past their opponents and next door neighbours, the Chequers, 72-71, whilst back in Oxford, the Gardener’s Arms (North Parade), reduced to only three players for the night, just got the better of the ‘Oakley Army’, (yes, the boys from the Chandos Arms are back!), 65-63.

The Black’s Head (Bletchingdon) rather ran out of gas during the summer but, revitalised by the fortnight break in hostilities, they overpowered an admittedly slightly under-manned Woodman (North Leigh) outfit, 78-66. Their inexhaustible quest for silverware could yet bear fruit this time around.

Almost as convincing was the Royal Sun (Begbroke) as they despatched the Sun (Hook Norton), 74-65, and in a match-up that mirrored their meeting at the conclusion of last season, and with the outcome pretty much the same, those wily old foxes the Seacourt Bridge (Botley) saw off the challenge from the Windrush Club (Witney), 78-71.