Over the moon and sick as a pig

The A team skipper texted his teammates early on the Thursday morning with the words: “Big match night. Need some big performances tonight. It’s all about bragging rights.”

Stuart’s lads, now in their third season in the Southampton & District Social Clubs League, faced the club’s newly-formed B side - and his younger brother Andrew, known as Barney.

Ouch!

Whether Stuart would have preferred to have beaten Andrew but lost the match remained the unasked question.

As it was, the A side prevailed 3-2 but Stuart surrendered the bragging rights within his own family.

Now, pool teams are notoriously difficult to organise. Have you ever tried squeezing toothpaste back into the tube (or, for that matter, tried to elicit a yes-or-no answer from an engineer)?

And the 8.30pm kick-off time is viewed more as a starting point for negotiation.

But Stuart is a rare breed among pool captains. He’s a born organiser. And he joined the team by accident.

Jason Phillips, who founded the side in 2009, rang Stuart and asked: “Do you want to play pool? You’ll need to be here in five minutes.”

Stuart, thinking Jason had organised an individual pool tournament at Hedge End Club, rushed over and was then told he was in the team and they were playing away.

Stuart, who took over the captaincy soon after, laughed: “I’m purely in the team for my organising; on ability, I’d be struggling.”

Teammate Steve Voss, who is playing - and winning - despite a broken right ankle, said: “He can get it organised and get things done. Most of the team’s quite happy about that.”

And Danny Kempster added: “He’s very organised; he’s got his head screwed on; he knows what he’s doing.”

Before the derby match, Stuart declared: “I do not want to be losing to them.”

But he insisted being skipper does not result in sleepless nights.

“I don’t wake up at three in the morning with a cold sweat,” he said.

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