Melbourn won 15-10

The seconds had a rarity for the second half of the season – a home game! Our first on our own courts since Christmas, and one of only two at Melbourn in the second half of the season (reasons why… we won’t go into here). The question was whether we could make it count or would being at home end the side’s winning run, which stood at 6 matches?

Reader: we won. But it was open to considerable doubt as mid-table Swavesey made us work hard for it. Typical was Will Bradshaw (5) against Nicky Dee. Will struggle to cope with Nicky’s powerful hitting in the first game, getting involved in a pace battle which didn’t suit him. He lost it and looked confused about how to go about things. However, a more settled second which saw him playing the old Squash saw of deep-short worked well and by the third he was well in command. Nicky made Will work for the fourth, but he got there, wrapping up a 13-15, 15-8, 15-3, 15-8 win.

Meanwhile, next door, Gareth Jones (4) was making even more of a meal taking on Scott Finlayson. Here Gareth was the cleaner player, with Scott running hard and hitting hard… but also loose. If Gareth could set things up to push Scott back and open up a front corner, he would be able to control matters. The problem is that isn’t really Gareth’s method and he was struggling to deliver the concept consistently. Two close games were shared but the third saw Gareth start to look smooth as he raced away with it. Unfortunately in the fourth, he looked rough as… anything, going for his kills too early, before he had set up the openings and also doing it without footwork. A string of errors put the match on the line. Fortunately Gareth cleaned himself up in the opening half of the decider, building a large lead that saw him home 15-12, 13-15, 15-5, 7-15, 15-5.

That sent us on to skipper Colm O’Gorman (3) against Jamie Hines. This was another close game, the opening two shared as Colm attempted to push Jamie into the back corners, only for Jamie to resist. The front of the court was potentially more open for drops than Colm was exploiting in the opening two, but once he realised he had worked Jamie fairly deep on the court he was able to take command of the next pair to complete a 15-12, 9-15, 15-8, 15-11 win… that he remarked afterwards was good that it ended 3-1 as hie energy levels for a fifth were decidedly dubious.

That meant the winning bonus was claimed before the top two went on court. Which turned out to be important as both Richard Gouriet (2) and Jan Brynjolffssen (1) were to lose. Richard had a bizarre day on his drop shots as his touch completely deserted him. He had played well in a graded tournament the previous weekend, taking down two players with SquashLevels in the high 2000s (which is the standard he is clearly capable of) but without the ability to finish rallies off the fitness of his opponent Nathan Clark, still in his 20s, was always going to be the critical factor especially in the latter half of games, Richard going down 12-15, 11-15, 8-15.

Meanwhile Jan was trying to deal with the lobs and drops from Marcus Tsui. Let’s say this isn’t his preferred style to play against. Jan found a way through the opener, but from the second onwards he was always half a step behind where he needed to be to pick Marcus’ shots up. Everything that had worked so well for Jan the previous week was absent in this one as he consistently struggled to put Marcus under pressure from the second onwards, and fell to a 15-13, 12-15, 10-15, 10-15 loss.