I will be ringing you all over the next few days to ensure i get the player registration forms completed for the next pool league meeting this week. Plus we are desperate for new players, all suggestions welcome, we have only added to our numbers by one so far....after our championship victory last year it would be a disaster not to followup with another good season, so lets all have a think about who you know and if they would fit in the team.

Also i have now created a 'feedburner' site for the pool team blog for those of you who cant get to the http://bakerspool.blogspot.com originating blog site. The feedburner URL is Below, i will be publishing fixture/player-availability details with venue google map references for each game on Mondays via the feed/blog, any more ideas on blog content please fire back to me

http://feeds.feedburner.com/MayBakerPoolTeamBlog

We can earn money for the team by publicising our blog to friends and family, feedburner allows you to earn cash by embedding single google adsense adverts in each blog post. I know someone who earned £300 in one year for the clubs coffers by putting his hockey club blog (what a poof) on the web with google adsense driven advertising with clickthru revenue see (www.google.co.uk/adsense). Weekly fixture/results/match reports on the blog drove the clubs circle of contacts to the site, lets try the same and try to earn enough money for an end of year beano. I have already created a adsense login so watch this space for details

Can all players who have not signed up this year and want to participate,
please email me to arrange signing this years player roster ASAP. We
are a little short at the moment of the 12 players we need, so
suggestions on new players please. Also please welcome Mitches father,
Terry, to our pool team illuminati as he has agreed to play this year.

Email me via tonycossey at gmail.com (- this type of notation should prevent spammers harvesting my email address from this blog with their pesky email harvest robots).

End of 2005 Season Photos, taken with Sony Ericsson Phone w800i in low light!

Ok i screwed up, we missed the off season league by two weeks, apologies to all those who wanted to partake --- DOH! The other news is that this saturday (17/12/2005 @8pm) is the end of season dinner dance, we will receive our trophies for winning the league championship and finishing runners up in the doubles.

Last night Cue Ball Bakers clinched runners up spot in the league doubles competition by beating the matapan public house in a playoff match. The playoff format dictated that each side enter 3 doubles pairs to play at the Barking Pool Club, the bakers pairings were as follows.

Match 1 = Mitch Dawson & Scott Davis
Match 2 = Peter Kempster & Yon Thomson
Match 3 = Tony Cossey & Scott Rose

In match one, the bakers players took an early advantage after the matapan potted too many reds from the break. Mitch and Scott gave the Matapan a late clearance opportunity but they failed to capitalise leaving Scott Davis to pot a smooth long range black ball along the cush.

In match two the frame developed into a safety exchange initially, Peter and Yon playing a series of tactical shots to claim pockets. In the later stages the Matapan were the first to attempt a clearup but this left Yon a clearance in return. Showing his ability to perform under pressure Yon potted the remaining three balls to close the frame and the playoff.

Well Done boys!

Champions !

This week the Cue Ball Bakers pool team had confirmation that we are Barking & Dagenham Pool League 2nd Division Champions. This is the first honour won by the team and we are scheduled to collect our Trophy on the 17th of December 2005 at the annual dinner. Well done to everyone in the team and lets keep up the winning habit.

PLEASE NOTE; We have a playoff for the doubles trophy runners up spot with the Matapan PH on Wednesday 9th of Novmeber 2005 @Barking Pool Club 8pm.

Below are a few facts and figures about the 2005 season.

1. Our Record - Played 23 games, won 14 games, drew 5 games and lost 4 games. This giving us a 47 point total, 2 points clear of the runners up (Roundhouse PH). We as a team won 108 frames and lost 76 frames

2. Squad Records (3 points for win, 1 for for attending a match and losing)

#Mitch Dawson 55 points
#Scott Davis 52 points
#Yon Thomson 46 points
#Peter Kempster 42 points
#Tony Cossey 41 points
#Scott Rose 38 points
#Denis Sheriden 29 points
#Stuart McClemments 29 points
#Dan Cooper 23 points
#Dale Bennett 16 points
#Jim Walker 4 points
#Dave balding 1 points

3. Odds & Sods

#BEST Win = 7-1 v Jolly Fisherman PH
#Worst Defeat = 2-6 v Admiral Vernon Metros
#Only team to beat us home & away were the Admiral Vernon Metro's (6-2 & 5-3). The metro's team finished 9th out of 12 in our league!
#when playing the runners up, the roundhouse PH, we managed a 5-3 win at home and a draw away.

The cue ball bakers played the final two fixtures of the league season in one week due to a game postponement. Both games, versus the BPCL and Barking Supporters Club, ended in 4-4 draws. This was somewhat of a anti climax given the stella performances against the Beacon and Jolly Fisherman public houses. However on the plus side both bakers doubles partnerships won both games in the doubles competition which gives us a chance of winning the title in that league also. The Bakers await the final league tables to see if they have clinched the league title for the first time in their history. Double partnerships named below.

BPCL = Dan Cooper and Peter Kempster
Barking Supporters = Dale Bennett and Mitch Dawson

Game Postponment; The game this week has been postponed due the opposition not being able to field a team due to the england qualifier versus poland and holidays. A recent league ruling allows teams to move games when there is an england soccer match. All this means there are now TWO games next week on TUESDAY 18th October 2005 (HOME) and WEDNESDAY 19th October 2005 (AWAY v Barking USC)

Cue Ball Bakers stormed to another win in the second top of the table clash in consecutive matches. The Beacon public house, positioned 2nd in the league, were defeated 6-2 away by the 'bakers boys' in a match of several tight frames. Both Yon and myself won at the top of the card, Yon winning with an impressive clearance in the opening frame, myself edging out my opponent with a clever snooker 'behind the 8 ball' giving me 2 visits to pot the black. The home team fought back to make it two frames each only for Scott 'the dog', Mitch and Stuart to close the match out with strong performances. The final frame of the evening being a walkover as the home side only had 7 players. This leaves the cue ball bakers 8 points clear of the beacon and 5 points clear of the Jolly Fisherman depending on the result the jolly fisherman had on wednesday this could leave the Cue Ball Bakers as champions with two games remaining.

There have been some problems displaying the new BLOG format via the Microsoft Internet Explorer web browser.

The sidebar on the right drops to the bottom of the page, this is caused by problem described in the following blog;

http://jonaquino.blogspot.com/2005/03/fixing-float-drops-in-blogger.html

I am going to try and adjust the blog so it does display correctly however users may find a better (and safrer) all round web experience by using the free browsers below.

Firefox - http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
Opera - http://www.opera.com/
Netscape - http://browser.netscape.com/ns8/

Bakers Strong Showing

Last night Cue Ball Bakers surged to dominating 7-1 home win against the Jolly Fisherman public house. Bakers made strong start which seemed to inspire the whole team to win close frames all the way down the card. With their strongest 8 players on show bakers needed a good result to keep their hopes of promotion alive and retain 2nd spot in the league.

Last night we managed a 4 all draw against the Matapan away, i think the quick table and generous pockers caught out our first couple of players, i missed the 8-ball on the clearance and had to pot the black as the last ball of the game after a series of snookers. However another point in the bag!

Just to try and drum up some interactivity on the blog, (i blame myself for not advocating this facility well enough), i am going to ask everyone at the match tonight to email me at tonycossey@gmail.com to request a login and start putting some content on the blog. I am starting by publishing results each thursday with a match report......a bit more dedication on updating this blog from me would go a long way i am sure.

League Fixtures 2005 - Cue Ball Bakers UK 8 Ball Pool Team

11/05/2005	Singles/Pairs
18/05/2005	Admiral Vernon Simms	Away
25/05/2005	Matapan	Home
01/06/2005	Jolly Fisherman	Away
08/06/2005	Beacon	Home
15/06/2005	Singles/Pairs
22/06/2005	BPC Ladies	Away
29/06/2005	Barking Football Supporters	Home
06/07/2005	@Barking PH	Home
13/07/2005	Singles/Pairs
20/07/2005	Dagenham WMC	Away
27/07/2005	Admiral Vernon Metros	Home
03/08/2005	Unicorn B	Away
10/08/2005	White Horse	Home
17/08/2005	Roundhouse	Away
24/08/2005	Bull	Home
31/08/2005	Red Lion	Home
07/09/2005	England Qualifier
Thurs 08/09/2005	Hope	Away
14/09/2005	Admiral Vernon Simms	Home
21/09/2005	Matapan	Away
28/09/2005	Jolly Fisherman	Home
05/10/2005	Beacon	Away
Tues 11/10/2005	BPC Ladies	Home
12/10/2005	England Qualifier
19/10/2005	Barking Football Supporters	Away

Another morning in the city of London completed, its seems UK interest rates are kept on hold at 4.75% by the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee which normally points to a slowing economy. .....see how boring the city is.....anyway on with the pool. Check out these links for the new season...

http://www.epa.org.uk
http://www.wepf.org
http://www.professionalpool.org

We have been asked by the league if any of the team would like to join a league 'task force' to review the rules we play this year with a view to changing next year, just shout up......the rules are on the EPA website above. TONY

Ok Guys as you can see i have been playing around with some of the photo facilities, to test a few of bloggers features. It all works very well......On a sporting note; Would anyone like to practice next week at the CueBall? We should all get some practice in on the new tables, nice, straight and fast with pockets that can't be mistaken for buckets like at the previous venue.....

Picture(12)

Picture(12)
Originally uploaded by tcossey.

Photo from my camera phone, pool teamsters can upload photos too by sending them to me.

Well guys here is the new season, we are registered with the league and have a new venue as per my email today , please email me at tony.cossey@gtcibrokers.com or tony@tonycossey.nildram.co.uk for a login to this BLOG

New team for this year is as follows in no particular order;
1. Peter Kempster 2. Steve Thomson 3. Tony Cossey 4. Denis Sheridan 5. Scott Rose 6. Scott Davis 7. Dale Bennett 8. Dave Balding 9. Mitchel Dawson 10. Stuart McClements 11. Dan Cooper 12. SPARE (Bomber, Gordon, Stumpy, Ash could play here.)

Quick couple of notes about last night, it seems the league will have a new results system next year and we will be able to SMS results in, its all going to be chaos i feel as no format has been agreed and i cant see the results guys have the mobile phone number of every team captain in his phonebook. Thus he will get about 300 texts with just 5-3 and nothing else.....time will tell.

Tony.C.

Well here it is the first post on the may and baker pool team blog, mostly this blog will interest team members and allow the trials and tribulations of a hectic 2004 season to be documented. Content here will include team match reports and general opinion on the seasons events........enjoy.