ABOUT US
Chipping Norton Invitation Aunt Sally League was formed in the 1960s and is still going strong today, although numbers are down.
Currently in 2017 the league supports two divisions and has Twenty One (21) teams and around 210+ people taking part in league and cup competitions throughout the season.
League games are normally played on Thursday evenings starting at 8:30pm.
Cup competitions normally on Monday evenings, refer to the full fixtures pages for more accurate dates.
The season spans between the months of April and September usually to take advantage of good weather, however this normally means getting wet on a number of occasions during the season thanks to the British weather system.
HISTORY OF AUNT SALLY
Aunt Sally is a traditional throwing game. The term is often used metaphorically to
mean something that is a target for criticism. In particular, referring to the fairground
origins, an Aunt Sally would be "set up" deliberately to be subsequently
"knocked down", usually by the same person who set the person up.
The game:
The game was traditionally played in British pubs and fairgrounds. An Aunt Sally was originally a figurine head of an old woman with a clay pipe in her mouth, or subsequently a ball on a stick. The object was for players to throw sticks at the head in order to break the pipe. The game bears some resemblance to a coconut shy or skittles, and may have developed from the blood sport of cock throwing, in which a chicken was tied to a post and people took turns throwing coksteles (special weighted sticks) at the bird until it died.
Today, the game of Aunt Sally is still played as a pub game in Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire. The ball is on a short plinth about 10cm high, and is known as a 'dolly'. The dolly or doll as its better known is placed on a metal swivel which turns 360 degrees then sits into a metal post called the iron and players will then take it in turn to throw six (6) sticks or short battens at the dolly, trying to knock it off cleanly without hitting the iron.
Modern rules of play:
Two teams of eight players throw six sticks each per leg. The game is played over three legs, or 'horses'. The largest number of dolls scored per team wins each leg. If there is a tie in the decisive leg, each team can throw three sticks and then one until there is a decisive result. In the league system, however these days legs can be tied, with two points being awarded for a leg win and one for a draw. If a player fails to score in a leg, it is called a blob with the ultimate embarrassment of a three blob game. It is a custom that the winner of the fourth (beer) leg is bought a drink of their choice by a member of the opposing team.
Other kinds of Aunt Sally:
Aunt Sally appears as a character portrayed by Una Stubbs in the television adaptation of the children's serial Worzel Gummidge, produced by Southern Television for ITV from 1979 to 1981. She is a fairground doll of the type used as a target for throwing competitions but nevertheless considers herself to be of a superior class to Worzel, a scarecrow and her frustrated suitor.
The term 'Aunt Sally' is in limited use as a political idiom, indicating a false adversary or straw man, set up for the sole purpose of attracting negative attention and wasting an opponent's energy.