The Gamble Conspiracy

Edward “Wobble” Gamble (definitely no relation to the comedian) is known for three things: wobbling, his hatred of anyone who drinks cider and wobbling. However, a little-known fact is that he somehow manages to be the only man to assist every goal that the Narwhals have ever scored. Today was an even stranger phenomenon where he somehow was recorded as having every assist in a game against Enfield 2s despite being nowhere on the match sheet. I could sense a conspiracy was afoot and meant I needed to start an investigation as to how this occurred. I am Detective Létit Ryde and today we unpack the mystery of how Ed “Wobble” Gamble was able to rack up 14 assists 60 miles away from the pool.

Our story starts at Whitgift (finally reopened after months of slumming it at Trinity) where a record breaking 11 narwhals showed up to the game. Now one would assume that with such a large team turning up today that Narwhals would be full of energy and attack the game from the off. One would be wrong however, with the team having lots of rust from the 2-week break (as well as the baby narwhals excessive drinking in Vegas) and the first quarter would finish 2-1 with a goal from Tim (of Leeches fame) being the only thing keeping us in it. However, something interesting happened in the build-up to that goal. Reports from independent observers (Gary Bowen) claimed there was a slight wobble in the pass that led to that goal. Even stranger, the only man capable of such a wobble was on a lazy river in Centre Parcs at the time. I began to brainstorm reasons when the referees blew the whistle to start the second quarter.

The second quarter started with one of the Oggy moments of all time conceding a man down and in a defiant protest against the trainee referees refused to get out leading straight into a penalty (Just Stop Oil won’t be giving him a callback after that). The penalty was then converted by the Enfield 9 to leave us 3-1 down. After this the game went back and forth with a goal for Narwhals being followed up by a goal for Enfield 3 times on the bounce. Interestingly, each of the Narwhals goals had the same wobble in the buildup. This was incredibly strange as the first could be put down to coincidence however 5 times in a row seemed to be impossible.

Enfield in the third quarter decided to call on the “old” wisdom of Surrey Uni water polo and perform a classic 3rd quarter meltdown conceding 6 goals to 1 to put us well ahead in the game. This was when the phenomena of the wobble really began to show itself with goals from Shute (2), Tim, Gio and the Finches each having a wobble in them (not to be confused with the Wobble that Finchy had after the ref sent him out).

The 4th quarter was nothing special to write home about, with Narwhals extending their lead by 1 ending the game 14-10 with 2 goals from Dan (also a Leech Loanee) and 1 from Shute to finish the game off.

The Wobbles were still there which confused me greatly. My first theory was that the spirit of that one peacock that got run over was disappointed by the delays to the pool repairs and felt sympathy to the Narwhals for having to play at Trinity for so long that he began changing the direction of passes to make them better. However, when using the Ouija board on poolside I got the response “bu-girk" and I remembered that I don’t speak peacock so would have to shelf the idea until I could find a translator.

Next, I asked the Whitgift staff if maybe they had somehow moved the Icelandic fault to cover just the underside of the Whitgift pool. My responses were very useful including “fuck off your team were so late, I just want to get home, I have a family and kids” and “tell Finchy to stop driving his car 90mph inside the school” which meant they must be hiding something. Thankfully I managed to put a drain camera down the filters at the side of the pool and push it along the drain to figure out where these tremors may be coming from. This led me all the way to the very same lazy river that Ed “Wobble” Gamble was currently drifting down. I watched closely under the water and realised those same Wobbles happened every time he reached for his drink (one of those 5-year expired beer cans from tour for anyone who’s curious) and that made me realise that this was how Gamble had managed to assist the team for so long and the reason for the delays to the pool reopening, Gamble (after conspiring with Trinity to give us a faulty scoreboard during the leeches game). Had now conspired with Whitgift to install a tunnel to centre parcs so that he could assist the goals without having to leave the river. He had also manipulated Nick Shute to get an incredible shot during a man up in the 2nd quarter to give moment of the match and had used the wobbles to get Tim from Leeches to put up a man of the match performance. He did not do anything to Oggy to cause his Just Stop Oil protest for fluffer, that happened naturally. I still have no leads on why Gamble would do this however I, TJ, alongside Gary, will be taking a trip to Portugal to work out the details of this case. More to come.

I have been Létit Ryde signing off