8th April 2010 - Messi Hound

Taking the inspiration for this week's name from Barcelona's Argentine player Lionel Messi, who had earlier in the week scored four goals to almost single-handedly eliminate Arsenal from the Champions League, we gathered hoping for a similarly impressive result to get The Hound's season back on track and to provide impetus for an energetic head-long dash for the finishing line.

We were denied our usual seat in the pub by a pair of non-participating Dorises who genteely sipped the occasional glass of wine and generally avoided getting into the spirit of things.

No matter - we warmed up with a crack at the day's Times' crossword and chose not to take it as a sign of things to come when we failed to complete it. We clattered through the various traditional Daily Mail warm up quizzes and settled in for the evening.

The first round felt good but scored no better than average - 25 out of 30 to be precise. But what did we care - we always lead at the end of Round Two right?

Wrong. We were again supremely average - joint seventh on 60 points, two behind the lead.

The final round was an increasingly gloomy affair - confidence and frustration were fading and growing in fairly equal measure. A good 'True or False' round though can change everything. And we had a bad one - a mere two from five possible. We stared glumly at the anagram for a while before Robson briefly illuminated proceedings with the answer.

We needed to have the best last round in the pub - we didn't, and thus finished joint third two behind the victorious 'Hamsters'.

Undeterred, or blinded by alcohol - or both I suppose, we nonetheless decided to use this umpteenth successive failure in a low key pub quiz as a platform from which to launch into the world of televised quizardry.

The keenly observant among you will note the absence of the regular, 'what-were-the-pre-match-meals?' and 'who-wore-what?' features. Deal with it.

Happy Hounding.