Is it just possible that the other teams in our league would prefer Groningen to become champion? Not because they like them better than us. Nay. If pushed to answer I would venture to suggest the opposite is true, but as John Cleese would say "It don't enter into it."

Lets, for arguments sake, look at it this way: if you had to play in Bloemendaal, Haarlem, Baarn, Hilversum, Amsterdam and Groningen… Which team would you want to get rid of? As in not have in the same league next year. One needen’t spend too much time on routenet.nl to figure out the answer. So when the brave and valiant ACC4 come to visit, you shake out all your old stockings for spare cash or call in all the favours you had outstanding and manage to get some guys in your lineup who can actually play the game. With petrol prices what they are the prospect of not having to do a return trip to Groningen with a dozen men already frees up considerable funds. So ACC4 face stronger and stronger opposition. However this ploy has not reckoned with one thing. The bad ass factor. Now the bad ass factor can be a hard one to explain. If you have sufficient time and funds you may try buying skipper Mike Walsh a few beers while he expands on the merits of bad asses and what effect they can have on performance in general and winning cricket matches in particular.
For one he may tell you about our game against Hilversum where despite a very good start in which Richard Matchett took five wickets within 14 overs, the opposition suddenly had a very able partnership that lifted them to 151 (and had it not been for bad ass Haney Zaidi breaking the partnership it could have been worse). 151 is doable for ACC4 you might say. But all of a sudden we are faced with real bowling. You know what real bowling is do you? Well normally at our level you don’t have to bowl a brilliant ball to get a batsman out. Batsmen get themselves out. Again Mike will expand on this for you using a hanging metaphor that includes a specific amount of rope. Seldom is a real wickettaking delivery required. You know the kind that would have gotten KP or Ian Bell out as well. One that rises up off a good length to chinlevel, scoops your gloves and is snapped up by first slip. Stuff  like that. Well we lost four wickets pretty quick and still needed 80 odd runs. Our two last recognised batsman were in (this just means that they are recognised on the street – as we are about to see: recognized as bad asses) and to be honest ACC4 were a little worried. So worried that the usual chirpiness went out of the team. A loss here would surely cost us the championship. Even the skipper lost his usual funny gait as he paced up and down the boundary. This could all be over in a hurry. With bowling like this – a middleorder collapse could easily turn into a total collapse and 80 runs at 4 an over way too much. But this is where Noor and again Richard Matchett proved just how bad their asses were. They waited patiently, unfazed by the jaffa’s or tempting slowballs held out in front of them until only 30 more were required and then. Wham bam thank you mam! Knocked it all up in two overs that made the blitzkrieg look like a… well you don’t really want to make comparisons to the blitzkrieg but that’s the kind of batting it was. ACC4 made their way back to Amstelveen and until late that night there were cries to be heard from the shadows that had reached the grass of the loopveld:
“What are we?”
“Bad asses!”