Rooster's Win!
Bouncing Backs
Roosters v Beaumaris CC; at Beaumaris,
Saturday 26 Oct 2013
By Captain Al
Well, if you had wandered into the Beaumaris clubhouse at halftime in the gripping showdown between the Roosters and the Beaus, you would have thought it was a scene from 'General Hospital' rather than 'Wide World of Sports'.
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| Who do you think you're kidding Mr Attwood |
The match was locked at one rubber apiece and there were two of the Roosters' finest, Brian and Bruce (what IS it about blokes whose names start with 'B'?), on the floor, doing stretching exercises to try to ease pain in dodgy backs.
HAD there been any trainers on site they would certainly have been called. But pluck and a play-through-pain attitude prevailed.
With three Roosters car-pooling on way down, an impromptu match-committee meeting had settled on the pairings: Brian and Forrest (based on sizzling Thursday-night form - ask Mark); Jolly Neale and Bruce.
Off we went, under overcast skies. B and F made it interesting for the crowd by falling behind 1-4, then had bookies scratching heads by reeling off eight or so games in a row to take the first set and wrest control of the second. The Beau boys rallied, but too late. Roosters in straight sets; B even had time to wander off in search of coffee and bananas. Neale and Bruce could have used some of the latter. Having dropped their first set and stormed back in the second, oomph was lacking in the third. Great effort, but a gallant loss in the third.
So. With two rubbers to play, it was anyone's to win. Bookies lengthened odds on Roosters after reports reached them of all that stretching. But that exercise regime obviously worked: BOTH pairs of Roosters came home with straight-sets wins. What could have been tight became a solid win: three rubbers to one; seven sets to two.
This may have been the oldest quartet of Roosters ever to take the court.
Youth? Who needs it?
Incidentally, when Forrest left Beaumaris, Neale and Bruce were taking on each other on the TABLE-tennis table in the clubhouse.
As Brian (TT pro) tried hard not to look.
Thanks, gentlemen. On we go...
NEXT WEEKEND - NO MATCH
(Melb Cup long weekend.)
Platitude of the Week
"The early games are just as important as the later ones"
Dennis the Tennis menace (what ever happened to Dennis?) just before the finals at the end of nearly every season.
And finally:
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| A plucked capon with its head, feet and tail feathers still attached. |
http://www.abc.net.au/arts/artofaustralia/
(it's on again Tuesday night ep2 8.30 ABC1)
The host "Edmund Capon" was once a rooster. Yes before he was castrated he was indeed a rooster (one of us). Here's his Wikopedia entry:
Capon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Capon (disambiguation).
History[edit]
The Romans are credited with inventing the capon. The Lex Faunia of 162 BC forbade fattening hens to conserve grain rations. To get around this the Romans castrated roosters, which resulted in a doubling of size.[1]:305 European gastronomic texts of the past dealt largely with capons, as the ordinary chicken of the farmyard was regarded as peasant fare, "popular malice crediting monks with a weakness for capons."[1]:309
Effects of caponization[edit]
Caponization is the process of turning a cockerel (young rooster) into a capon. Caponization can be done by surgically removing the rooster's testes, or may also be accomplished through the use of estrogenimplants. With either method, the sex hormones normally present in roosters are no longer effective. Caponization must be done before the rooster matures, so that it develops without the influence of sex hormones.
Capons, due to the lack of sex hormones, are not as aggressive as normal roosters. This makes capons easier to handle and allows capons to be kept together with other capons since their reduced aggressiveness prevents them from fighting.
The lack of sex hormones results in meat that is less gamey in taste. Capon meat is also more moist, tender and flavorful than that of a hen or rooster, which is due not only to the hormonal differences during the capon's development but also because capons are not as active as roosters, which makes their meat more tender and fatty.[2]
Capons are fairly rare in industrial meat production. Chickens raised for meat are bred and raised so that they mature very quickly. Industrial chickens can be sent to market in as little as five weeks. Capons produced under these conditions will taste very similar to conventional meat, making their production unnecessary.
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