Let me say immediately that this is not an indictment of the English rugby team, although after the match against France... No, in this instance, we have a fine example of poor bridge from a Green Point Swiss Teams. As the exponent of one of the poorest efforts, I am eminently qualified to report this catalogue of paucity.

After two (immaculate) passes, South opens 1. My partner doubled — well at least he has four cards in the other major — and North bid a wimpish pass. At this point, I will start on the excuses: I was tired, bored after picking up a succession of poor hands, and therefore ready for a poor moment (or two). When my partner doubled, I fanned out my cards to consider my response, and that pesky 2 hid behind my diamonds — so I bid 2. This was passed out, and it was South's turn to shine. Sure enough, the cloud of poorness spread and he tabled the 3.

The first two tricks were routine (i.e. not actually the worst possible plays, even if close): 9 holds, and a round of diamonds is ducked. South now spots a possible extra trick and attacks the Spade suit with Ace and another, which North wins. Now the pall of poorness envelops North. In fairness, he "knows" that there can be no spade ruff because I must have more diamonds than spades, but this is teams; without the ruff there can only be five defensive tricks... so he switches to a heart.

Even this declarer cannot fail to scrape together eight tricks now, so E/W jot down +90, and anticipate a loss of 2 IMPs.

It might occur to you that this bridge, while poor, is not really poor enough to feature on this site. Indeed, you might consider that only East has played true poor bridge, or at least that North's crime was only to trust his opponents. However, to explore the real depth of poverty, we must magically travel to the other table, where our team-mates are defending the eminently more reasonable contract of 2. A routine nine tricks, you might think; or perhaps an extreme poor effort by declarer to make only eight tricks. Wrong, the poor quarter at this table is North, who decides that his partner's opening lead of 10 (won in dummy with A) shows the 9, so when in with A he exits with 3. Declarer was somewhat surprised to win 9, and collect 10 tricks.

North compounded this defensive effort by suggesting that "4 is close", but this was not his poorest comment on scoring during the day: on hearing that we had (over)bid to 6, going two down on normal defence in a match which we lost he said "Pity about the slam". My response was to point out that, if they had defeated the 5 bid at their table, we would have won the match anyway: