Cheltenham Skittles League - Division 2
HOMERESULTS & INFOLINKSABOUT US

About Our Team

Motormen United (Bristol Street Motors before 2009 season)

Our team is a mix of young (and very keen players) and several experienced players that have been playing this game for many many years.
At the moment, our home alley is the Newlands Park Rugby Club. We've been playing here since the 2015-2016 season.

Unfortunately, I can't tell you too much about the history of this team as nobody from the original Bristol Street Motors 'A' team is playing for us anymore. I will try to dig a bit more about this in the near future, but if you've played for this team in the past or you know anything about its history please drop me an email here.

About The Website

In the last few seasons we went through the stages of having the scores (averages) handwritten on pieces of paper, or on computer generated text files, or even on very complex excel documents. None of these were as convenient as a website that can be viewed at any time from anywhere in the world. Our pride (or shame :P) is in the averages of the scores that every player has managed more or less successfully each week.
Apart from this page, almost everything on this website is dynamically generated based on the scores entered into the database at the end of each game. There is a lot of information and statistics that can be found around the website, but the most important ones are our averages which can be easily found on the Last Season Results page or on the Overall Stats page.

Source files have been last updated on 13/08/14.
For any information or comments please contact me here.

About The Game

Skittles is a pub game played in Cheltenham since 1938. The rules are simple and anybody can play without any special training. The main purpose of the game is to have fun while having a drink at the same time. A game usually lasts about 2 hours.

Requirements
We need a pub/club with a skittles alley and 2 teams of 12 players each. The game is played using 3 balls(about the size of a medium melon) on a wooden alley about 10-15 meters long and 1-1.5 meters wide.
The purpose is to knock down the 9 wooden pins arranged in a diamond shape at the end of the alley.
The size of the balls, alley and pins can vary slightly from one pub to another. The gap between the pins is usually big enough for the ball to go straight through, missing all the pins.

Arrangements
The players in each team are split into 4 legs of 3 players each. In each leg 3 players selected by the skipper will bowl one hand (see description below), followed by the corresponding 3 players in the other team. This will be repeated 6 times after which the leg has finished. Then, the next leg starts with the next 3 players from each team competing.
The game is over when all 4 legs have been played and, obviously, the team with the highest score (total number of pins knocked down) wins.

Basic rules
Each player bowls 6 times (aka hands) using the 3 balls for each hand. The pins are brought back up into the diamond shape after each hand.
For example, if a player knocks down 4 pins with the first ball (5 pins still standing), 3 pins with the second one (2 pins still standing) and none with the third one the score for that hand will be 4 + 3 + 0 = 7 pins. The final score for that player will be the sum of his 6 hands.
You can see the results of a typical game here.
A player can get a score greater than 9 if he knocks down all the pins with one (or two) balls to spare. All the pins are redone and by doing this, theoretically, a player can get maximum of 27 pins in one hand. This hand (score over 9) is called spare. A missed spare is a spare with the value of 9 (he missed all pins with the spare ball(s)). Spares are quite rare and I've never seen one bigger than 17. To get more than 18 the player has to flatten all the pins twice with the first 2 balls.
If a player misses the pins with all the balls, the hand is called beaver.
In our team (this can vary from one team to another) a player pays a penalty if he scores less than 5 in one hand.


About Our League

Cheltenham skittles league consists of 13 divisions (at the time of writing). In each division play about 12-14 teams. All teams play each other twice, once home and once away in a standard league based system.
The season normally starts in September and ends in April.
At the end of the season the top 3 teams from each division go up while the bottom 3 relegate.
Current tables and results can be found on the league website.



2017 - Horea A. - www.motormen-united.co.uk
Database last updaded Tue 12 Mar 2024 12:39