The Five Towns' Quiz League celebrated its 27th season with the annual Finals' and Presentation evening, held at the George V WMC in Glasshoughton, Castleford on Monday 21 May 2018.

       The evening commenced with the traditional event opener, the Plate Knockout Final, for teams eliminated at the Round One stage of the Knockout Cup and it was contested this year between Crofton WMC and the Vulcan Mosquitoes of Pontefract.  The match was a close one throughout, with the lead changing hands more than once during the ten-round quiz and at some points even being level, but Crofton came out of the encounter triumphant, with a winning score of 74 points to 67 and on the strength of that they lifted the Plate Knockout salver trophy.

       This edge-of-the-seat thriller was then followed by the main event of the evening, the Five Towns' Quiz League premier knockout competition, the Knockout Cup Final.  This year the finalists were not for the first time, the top two finishing teams in Division One, Wanderers and Flanagan's Army.  The Army went into the match having already sealed the Division One title a few weeks earlier and looking to complete a league and up double for the first time in their history.

       Flanagan's won the toss and elected Questions B.  They won the first round by 10 points to 4 and then Wanderers threatened to come back, winning the second round to bring the scores to 14-10.  But after that, the quiz went Flanagan's Army's way and being 15 points ahead at one stage, they ended by counting themselves lucky that they went into the final round, Round 10, with a lead of 13 points (winning a team round to nil can bring a team 12 points), because they lost the last round 10-4 having gone 6-0 down, so as stated, fortunate they had a 13 point lead going into it!

       So Flanagan's Army won the Knockout Cup, thus completing their first ever double and all this was followed by the presentations for the season's endeavours.  We were joined this year, to present the trophies, by Mr Jonny Mitchell, the headteacher and star of ITV's BAFTA winning reality show Educating Yorkshire and a very popular and sociable chap he proved to be!

       The Division One shield and Knockout Cup was of course presented to Flanagan's Army, the Division Two shield to Division Two Champions Golden Lion Dudes, the Plate salver to Crofton WMC, the winners of the Individual competitions, Ashley Handley of Flanagan's Army for Division One and Neil Aspland of Railwaymen for Division and finally the league's 'Good Egg' award, the Spirit of the Game Trophy' which is voted for by all registered players for the current season, was awarded for the second year running to Debby Aspland, Chair of the league and Captain of Leading Ladies who had won the Handicap Cup the week before.

       Refreshments were provided by the George V WMC, a raffle was held and the Members' draw, which is a draw on the basis of one ticket per registered team member in the room at the time and the prize is a free season's league fees for next season, was won by Flanagan's Army whose member Duncan Cooper held the winning ticket.

       As usual, the evening was accompanied by the Secretary's humorous match programme for Finals' Night, which features information about the competing teams, comic articles and cartoons etc and also a front cover based on a spoof of something like a movie poster or album cover from the past.  This year's theme was Quadrophenia.