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Neighbourhood > Guest Character Profiles > Pat Horrocks Mirren Lee

After joining the women’s basketball team, the Grey Growlers, Madge Bishop befriended fellow team member Pat Horrocks. When Madge arranged for one of her neighbours, journalist Libby Kennedy, to interview team captain and coach Portia Grant and give the team some publicity, it backfired badly when the article made Portia sound like an ego-maniac who only cared about the team for her own gains. During an emergency team meeting, Pat suggested that they all vote on having Portia expelled from the team, as she clearly didn’t care about them enough to go on leading them, but Madge talked them out of it and agreed that Libby had twisted Portia’s words and she should be given another chance. A couple of weeks later, when Portia injured her ankle, she arranged for Madge’s old friend Lou Carpenter to take over as coach of the team, but Madge, Pat and the others were appalled when he started treating it like a boot camp, pushing the women beyond their physical capabilities. After a few weeks, Madge and Lou were finally getting along and working as co-coaches, while Portia’s ankle had healed, and the team were forced to vote on who should be their permanent coach, with Portia only winning as she decided to take the vote of her absent sister, Hilary.

A month later, the team were preparing for their first big game of 1999, with Madge still fighting with Portia about her role as coach and the inclusion of Hilary, who never turned up to the training sessions. At the basketball court, the team seemed doomed when the umpire turned out to be Marjorie Hall, a sworn enemy of Portia’s, who had been unceremoniously dumped from the team the year before. Pat wasn’t convinced that the team had any hope of winning, and things got worse when Portia was knocked down by a member of the opposing team and had to sit out the rest of the game, leaving them with only four players, but, at the last minute, Madge scored and won them the match.

The following year, Madge arranged for a reunion of the Grey Growlers at her house, which was soon hijacked by her neighbours, Lyn Scully, who had recently become involved with Beauty Tree, a cosmetics company, and wanted to use Madge’s reunion for her first sales evening. The evening went badly, with Pat annoyed that their party had turned into a sales pitch and only buying some bubble bath to be polite, and Madge left to apologise to all of her old friends as they left her home.

Biography by Steve

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