quality. athenian and ramus are setting the bar higher every day!

Excellent grid, really struggled with this one though - couldn't find the balls haha

I double-guessed that the after eight would not be referring to mints. WRONG! Good grid though.

good quality and not obvious

There are plenty of red herrings here, including at least one incomplete "phantom category" that isn't one of the solutions! I very nearly didn't solve it but just scraped through to find the groups, after which it was easy to get the connections (having already thought of them all).

There were so many balls! It beat me even though I got the groups I couldn't get the balls together! Balls!

nice

This is an invalid grid. You can swap any of the "shirts" with golf to get an alternate solution.

days of the week was great

loved the connections

loved the connections

"me" makes a very good point. Does an alternate solution necessarily invalidate the grid? Interesting. I'll ask Baldrick to devise a cunning plan to resolve the issue...

I think that multiple solutions does invalidate the grid, but “golf shirt” would be a bit of a stretch.

Oh yes, Alan Ball, that really famous guy ....

I do hope you’re not being sarcastic balls. Try googling Alan Ball MBE the World Cup Winner, multiple honour winning player, manager, who more than once broke the UK transfer record.
Football didn’t start with the Premier League.
I forgive you if you’re only 12 of course! 😉

Hmm.. I guess you could have the shirts, but you have 8 up there, in two complete groups, that could be followed by ball. All of the "shirts" category could be followed by ball.

Great!

Crappy grid

I know who Alan Ball is but that's poor. Considering the other 3 in the group are objects it makes little sense that the 4th be a person. Especially one with such a common first name and also not exactly high up the list of famous Alans

Quite difficult but very poor. Alan Ball... really?

thank you for the grid :)