STAPLER MATCHING GETS JOB DONE IN SAMAR

CARREO by Rolando S. Luzong

Peoples Tonight (February 7, 2010)

STAPLER MATCHING GETS JOB DONE IN SAMAR

The style may be confusing to me who has seen it for the first time, but the derby matching process practiced in Samar, particularly at the Paranas Cockpit by matchmakers Ocar Garcia and Benie Alegro, is enough to get the job done.

The idea is, like in a 3-cock derby such as the one I witnessed hosted by Bernie Tacoy last Saturday - January 30, to list in cards the weights submitted by the participants. One card for each weight that should also bear the entry number ; entry name; entry owner; no-fight requests; amount of bets; fight schedule preference etc.

The matching board Oca, Benjie and Bernie

After all the entries have registered and all the roosters’ weights are entered, a wide pad of acetate, like the material used in construction plans, equally divided into rectangles with bold prints of particular weight brackets like 2010; 1980; 2400; 2500 etc. which is actually weight in kilos.

Each and every weight card is placed on their proper weight rectangles on the acetate. Then, the grouped weight cards are retrieved set by set and are spread out on the table. Each card will then be found his match from among the rest of the cards.

When two weight cards are found to be the best match, the two weight cards are then stapled together. The process goes on until all the weight cards are matched.

Matched and stapled

This will be followed by the sequencing process, wherein they will go through the all the matched-weight cards and one by one assigned a fight number to it.

The birds were matched, the fights were scheduled and the derby was staged.

However, the glitz I mentioned before the matching even began happened. There was a moment when there were only two weight cards for one of the entries, so a card was missing. They had to count and look and go through each card again.

There was a moment during sequencing that the number of fights were one less that they should be.

There was also an incident when one of the participants, upon reaching the pit and weighing his birds in the official scale, found out that his personal scale is 15 grams over than the official scale, so he requested that the weights he submitted should be changed to 15 grams lower. It had to be done, so the cards had to be shuffled and reshuffled again.

According to Botoy (llamador) he brought in the system from Bicol when he attended a derby at Legazpi, Albay once.

I personally would like to than the cockers of Samar for the very warm welcome and accommodation. Mabuhay po kayo.