Of Hard Rod and Balls

Snooker is a game that grows out of a twilight club world, and it imposes great psychological strains --- as today's matches demonstrate. Snooker is an appealing game, and not just because it goves a sporting chance to those who would never make it in games of more physical bent.

In today's snooker and 4-ball matches, our hall 2 players show startling wizardry with the cue, alongside endurance in a gruelling mind game. The hush - broken only by the hypnotic clinking of the balls - adds to the intensity. When so much entertainment panders to short attention spans with noise and movement alone, snooker's slow burning tension impinges great stress on both hall 2 players and supporters.

We came. We endured. And we ........ lost. I would have willingly traded half of my life just to write "We won". Yet circumstances dictated otherwise. Although we lost, our hall 2 players gave their everything and their efforts deserved to be lauded.

The preliminary match today pitted hall 2 against hall 5. In both the 4-ball and snooker matches, hall 5 players managed to find some form first, but this only served to galvanise our hall 2 players as they embarked on heavy scoring and tight tactical plays. Hall 2 managed to secure a 3-2 win against Hall 5 and we proceeded to compete against Hall 3 in the winners' bracket.

Up against hall 3, hall 3 triumphed both the 4-ball games, causing us to be down by 2 games. Many of hall 2 ardent supportes were vexed with frustations and a collective sigh of disappointment could be heard among the fans. One even had the mad idea to rush out and start massacring the halls 3 players. Oh, that person was me by the way.

Despite the overwhelming odds, our next pair of snooker players maintained their decorum and trashed both of their opponents to bring the nail-biting match to a 2-2- draw. Our hall 2 players are living exemplars of the axiom "form is temporary, class is permanent" and i am sure even the opponents will agree.

The last match that determined everything (to me at least) was a snooker match. Our hall 2 player was determined to bring glory to our hall, yet it was unfortunate that he missed a gilt-edged chance to clear up to lead. This caused me to go berserk and i started hitting balls with the snooker rod errrrr I mean although we lost, we accepted defeat with grace. Also, this meant that we had to compete with hall 5 again to fight for the 2nd place.

Contrary to popular belief of the fans that we could triumph again, our players suffered a lost of 1-3. Damnation. The matches this time were not pretty. Our hall 2 players broke down more often than my grandpa's old Mercedes Benz and we had to accept defeat. Again.

Although we did not managed to grasp victory, it was a close and compelling competition to hall 2 aficiados. The hall 2 players might not have won the chance to enter the finals of the competition, but they certainly had won my admiration and respect.


To huilin and jingxin: what the fish, we lost ARGAHRAGHRARGHAAGRG!!!!!! can we go and burn down hall 3 and hall 5 ???


*anyway, if you were wondering why there's a c chess pic in there, it's actually bass & terry playing c chess. can't believe bass is so intellectual! :D

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