After his recent appearance in the Only Connect Series Final alongside FOCAL regulars Fiona Titcombe and James Haughton, Tom “Maus” Carey is here to fill you in on our first Event of 2026!

It’s the start of the new FOCAL year! Kicking off CO:Events for the year, like every¹ year since 2005, is COLIN, taking us back to Lincolnshire where it all started. It’s the 21st such weekend, so we’ve got playing cards and mugs as the special prizes as you have to be 21 to legally use them. Myself and Graeme extend the longest COLIN attendance streaks, which started more than half my life ago now.

As part of the tradition, a wad of us were in the Fox and Hounds on the Friday night. After the long time owners left in 2022, it’s been a bit of a lottery what level of service and survivability you’ll get there, but this year it was genuinely really good². We had a big old table, some traitors left to go watch The Traitors, we did a lot of pool³ and darts, where new boy Michael Nicholson won the little darts tournament we did. At some point it was back to the Travelodge or various hotels that don’t require you to risk your life crossing that roundabout.

What happened last year at CO:Events? A few of us won one event. MSR took third place on total events won, winning two⁴ – how have we got to a point where MSR is winning the untied third most events? This is indeed a disturbing universe. But winning basically everything were the two titans of the scene, Dylan Taylor and Tom Cappleman. These two contested the grand final of last year a couple months ago in Milton Keynes, and it looks like they’re not about to slow down.

At COLIN’s main event on Saturday, you could pay a quid to get a bit of paper with a potential final draw on, and win a bunch of money if it was right. Our glorious focal chair⁵ immediately, in what I’m sure was a completely fair and honest random pick, got the paper with both Dylan and Tom on. With nothing else to play for, it was time to do some countdown.

We had a lovely bunch of COLIN newbies including recent TV series finalist Tim James⁶. Let’s look at the two big dogs’ road to the final. Anthony Endsor found his way to a table with TCap and the aforementioned Tim, while Dylan survived a very rough first round draw of Steve Hyde and incumbent Countdown Champion Jase Cullen.

After lunch, Dylan ended up on a table with Dan Byrom and myself, who missed enough easy stuff to not be able to take advantage of a conundrum Dylan didn’t know ffs⁷. Tom had a less easy time, losing to Matt OC and scraping past Ed Byrne on a tiebreak⁸. Dylan then took down Matt and George⁹ on his final table while Tom recovered on table two with wins over Matthew Brockwell and Tim Hebbes to set up the final we were all expecting.

Tom won that one last year, but this time Tom chose to use the Maus Random Generator¹⁰ to pick his numbers and it backfired because he didn’t spot the solution to 1 2 10 9 8 6 – 937, sorry Tom! Also Dylan beat him to the max from MAGERASCR so it was over before Tom solved the conundrum BKNWILSON quickly¹¹.

That night people scattered for food plans but most of us reconvened at the Social Club behind Sunday’s venue. Fun and cool and nice!!!

Sunday rolled around and after various breakfasts we appeared, amazingly on time, at the Memorial Hall! This time we had Tom opening with wins on Mike Springett and another recent series runner up Brett Davids, while Dylan faced Adrian on the first table for the sixth time in the past year and also Stewart was there too. Dylan’s points total was looking a little weedy for one of these tough four game events, while Tom was top of the table.

We restart something like 45 minutes early as by some miracle everyone was there basically on time. Dylan beats Ed and Tom Finn, TCap gets revenge on Matt OC and flattens myself, and Matthew Brockwell chickens a 9 and thus fails to score 60 in his win which puts Dylan right back in the final!

We have a repeat. Dylan won last year’s hangover and yesterday’s main event. Graeme and Phil in DC, Maus is Rachel for some reason. They match every letters round, only missing SHOEBOX for the double max, but when the conundrum INCENSEGY¹² is revealed it’s Tom what gets it. Celebrations and prize giving happens – both days I got the lowest position needed to end up in the bubble of getting the good prizes both days, cheers for picking 10^th and 6^th Ben.

So that’s that! Dylan and Tom swap titles and are obviously top two for the season so far. Can anyone stop them? Find out across the year, starting with our next outing in London! Cheers, Maus.

1. Except for 2021, because Ben was washing his hair… ↩︎
2. Other than the horrific AI generated signage ↩︎
3. Some of us even remembered what coloured balls we had to pot! ↩︎
4. In between fending off the paparazzi at Villa Park ↩︎
5. All hail our eternal leader ↩︎
6. Jammiest ↩︎
7. PARQUEDUD ↩︎
8. Ed informs me the numbers round he beat Tom on was 50 10 9 7 4 4 – 632. Good luck ↩︎
9. See 5 ↩︎
10. Patent pending ↩︎
11. Solutions left out as an exercise to the reader ↩︎
12. See 11 ↩︎