Astonishing result in Wood Green v Barbican
Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2020 10:41 am
At last, the teams drew!
Yesterday they played their 24th consecutive match in division one (starting from 1996/7). In the past, an astonishing eleven of those matches have ended 4.5-3.5 for either side (from which Barbican has done well, but Ok, sometimes the sides have been especially unbalanced and you can guess who did well when the winning margin was larger). Still, eleven 4.5-3.5 results is another record, so, surely a bit surprising that we had to wait for as long as this for a 4-4 draw.
It is of course the longest running 4NCL fixture. Guildford have had 15 consecutive matches with Wood Green and 14 consecutive matches with Barbican (because 2013/4 was the year when Barbican did not make the championship pool, and the same for Wood Green the following year). Blackthorne, including their various incarnations, are currently playing their 20th year in division one. They have quite often missed out on the championship pool, which you would think would very much limit their chances for unbroken fixtures (they didn't get to play Wood Green or Barbican in 2008/9, and that was the very first year of the pool system). However they often - actually, until recently, almost always - started in the same original pool as Guildford, and so continued to play them both in good seasons and in bad. I think they may have played 16 consecutive matches with them, until they did not meet in 2016/7, and only once since.
Yesterday they played their 24th consecutive match in division one (starting from 1996/7). In the past, an astonishing eleven of those matches have ended 4.5-3.5 for either side (from which Barbican has done well, but Ok, sometimes the sides have been especially unbalanced and you can guess who did well when the winning margin was larger). Still, eleven 4.5-3.5 results is another record, so, surely a bit surprising that we had to wait for as long as this for a 4-4 draw.
It is of course the longest running 4NCL fixture. Guildford have had 15 consecutive matches with Wood Green and 14 consecutive matches with Barbican (because 2013/4 was the year when Barbican did not make the championship pool, and the same for Wood Green the following year). Blackthorne, including their various incarnations, are currently playing their 20th year in division one. They have quite often missed out on the championship pool, which you would think would very much limit their chances for unbroken fixtures (they didn't get to play Wood Green or Barbican in 2008/9, and that was the very first year of the pool system). However they often - actually, until recently, almost always - started in the same original pool as Guildford, and so continued to play them both in good seasons and in bad. I think they may have played 16 consecutive matches with them, until they did not meet in 2016/7, and only once since.
