Know thy enemy: the team that my Phantom Lunches is facing off against in the Big One this weekend is the Ginger Ninjas. They are an unusual opponent, although not a unique one, as I’ll get to later. The team is nominally coached by Claire, who sits in the chair diagonally across from me at work. But Claire is not a football obsessive, so she has been helped along the way by David, who sits diagonally over the partition from me. David came to help Claire because the person who set up the league invited too many people, so that David missed out on a spot. Apparently some deal was worked out about splitting the prize money if, God forbid, the Ginger Ninjas won the league. (Can I somehow use this arrangement to sow distrust among their ranks? Hmm, it may possibly be a little late for that…)
The upshot of all of this is that my opponent is not who it appears to be. For example, I probably could get the information out of Claire whether or not her team has a trade left. But David is a more inscrutable opponent: when I quizzed him on the subject (perhaps not the most covert approach), he answered that maybe he had a trade left, maybe he didn’t. (For what it’s worth, I think he’s bluffing – I reckon he used his last trade to try and win last week.) So far the scoreline is 1-1, with them winning the home-and-away season match-up, and me winning the first final.
So why is this not a unique opponent? Well, as it turns out the team that topped our league at the end of the home-and-away season was also a double act – the wife sits at the desk across from me, and the husband manages the team across the phone. That team was my main concern until the Ginger Ninjas helpfully put them out last week. It remains to be seen whether they actually did me a favour or not.
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