Well, I was a little blitzed last night from the after victory celebrations so I was in no condition to go much into the play by play.  In fact, in the 3 lines I did post I corrected 3 typos this morning.

Anyway, Eberhardt is an outstanding team with a strong lineup top to bottom, including the top ranked player in “A” division, Dennis Galiza.  We only had the minimum four players available, but we stacked up well and we were feeling confident.  As I mentioned, Eberhardt finished first in the league, although there was some controversy surrounding that.  We had to postpone our week two match against them and despite our best efforts we could not get Eberhardt to agree to a suitable time for a make-up match.  Now, I’m not ascribing any bad intent on their part (I know at least one of their guys reads this blog, so I want to be clear on that), but still we were pretty frustrated that we had to take a forfeit.  The forfeit gave Eberhardt 28 legs (and us a -9) which put them in first.  Guzzlers, the second place team and our opponent in next weeks championship match, was understandably unhappy with this turn of events.  Now, Eberhardt spanked us pretty good in our only regular season face-off, whether they would have taken enough legs had we made up our match to take first anyway will never be known.

So that was the backdrop going into last night’s meeting.  We got off to a good start in singles ’01 with Scott and Seung Youb both going 2-1.  I drew Dennis in singles cricket and I knew I had my work cut out for me as he has had an amazing season.  Frankly, my goal was to get at least one leg from their best player.  I actually threw some of my best darts of the season against Dennis.  But it seemed like for every six mark I threw (and I threw several) Dennis would answer with a 7 mark.  It was a frustrating experience to be sure and I went down 0-3.  Fortunately, my teammate Ali picked me up by going 3-0 against his opponent.

Youb and Dennis had another amazing match in singles mix (both throwing ton 80s, something I had never seen in the same leg), and Youb prevailed 2-1.  I took Lucky down 2-1 in our singles mix, and Scott and Ali both did well too.  Which brought us to a 15-9 lead going into the last round of doubles (19 being the magic number for victory).

Ali and I faced off against Dennis and Ron while Scott and Youb drew Greg and Lucky.  We were standing at 1-1 when Scott and Youb finished their 3-0 sweep, which gave us the requisite 19 legs and the right to meet Guzzlers on Monday night.

Guzzlers whipped us in both our matches during the regular season, so we have our work cut out for us.  They also have home bar advantage, and Gecko’s is a venue I don’t much care for.  As this is our last year as a team (I’m moving to Rubbies and Scott and Craig are returning to Canada) we want the championship bad.  Of course, wanting it the most is not enough, we’ve got to get the job done at oche. 

Despite the odds, I like our chances.