FOLLOWING the previous week’s ‘Crime’ themed Tabletop, performing as the curtain-raiser to the 2015 Oxfordshire Summer Quiz season, it was back to the nitty gritty business of head-to-head league encounters last Thursday evening.

As was forecast in this column seven days ago, there was a shock result in the opening round.

It was provided by the Royal Sun (Begbroke) who claimed the scalp of Premiership outfit, the Royal Blenheim (Oxford City), by the impressive yet unflattering margin of 13 points, 79-66.

Winning captain, ‘Beirney’, conceded it was one of those occasions when every choice came off as his charges led from pillar to post with never a hint that momentum would swing back in their opponent’s favour.

By contrast, another Premier Section side had a far more comfortable experience. “If it was a prize-fight, they’d have stopped it”, was how losing skipper, ‘The Bridge’, surmised affairs after his White Hart (Eynsham) unit were decimated by a rampant Ploughman’s Bunch! (Wolvercote).

With the highest score of the night, the Bunch! posted 84 points, 27 more than the White Hart and one senses they are going to be serious contenders for the main prize throughout the championship campaign.

Needless to say their chief rival for honours will be fellow housemate and recent claimants to the Winter Premiership title, the Plough.

Predictably, they too got their pursuit of yet more silverware off to a successful start but they were made to work hard in a 79-70 win over a spirited Green Road Club (Kidlington).

For ‘Busby’s Babes’, aka the Blue Boar (Chipping Norton), their first foray into summer quizzing proved a fruitful one. In a yo-yo tie on home turf they just managed to see off the belligerent challenge of those wily old foxes, the Seacourt Bridge (Botley), 66-60.

Fielding new recruit, ‘Hayesy’, former head honcho of the now sadly defunct Royal Blenheim ‘B’ (‘The Young ‘Un’s’), the Gardener’s Arms (North Parade) celebrated their fine capture by overcoming visitors, the Bletchingdon Nomads, 70-63.

In the one other game played, the North Oxford Conservative Club (Summertown) took revenge on a somewhat out-of-sorts Black Swan (East Oxford) for a series of defeats stretching back to 2013.

To be fair, it was a pretty one-sided contest from early doors with the Con Club convincing victors, 78-53.

The Swan’s Captain Conway was in fine form, however, especially with the Beck’s!, and, rather curiously, his surprisingly vast knowledge of cat and dog breeds, but clearly when Frank the Kerryman is absent, his team is at a massive disadvantage.

The unanswered question was also posed, ‘Whatever happened to Burkey?’ Is he still paying for the disastrous consequences of the Captain’s travels to Australia? Harsh!

James Carr’s questions

1. Which vegetable has a French name meaning ‘eat the lot’?
2. In Sergei Prokofiev’s musical composition, ‘Peter and the Wolf’, which musical instrument represents the cat?
3. The flag of which U.S state features an image of a bison?
4. Where in the human body are ‘The Cords of Billroth’?

ANSWERS: 1. Mange tout, 2. Clarinet, 3, Wyoming, 4. Spleen.