Melbourn lost 1-12

Week 3 of the Herts Summer League saw a renewal of old rivalries as Haileybury vs Melbourn threw up some match ups seen previously in other circumstances.

The third string provided the first of these as Richard Gouriet (3) took on Karl Pyle. Prior to moving to the Melbourn area Richard had been based in Hertford, which is where Haileybury draws many of it’s players from. Indeed Richard was a former Haileybury 1sts Captain, making him particularly determined to play this match… particularly when he found out Karl was playing as well; “I’ve known Karl for years”.
The impression given was back in the day Richard usually beat Karl, but this was potentially a different story after Richard’s five seasons away from Squash, a period Karl has played through and upped his level during. Still, it looked an even match on paper… but not on the court at first as Richard’s patient and steady approach was simply being overwhelmed by Karl’s more aggressive movement and shot selections. Around two minutes in it was something like 10-1 and Richard was looking bemused.
A late resurgence in game 1 made the final score a bit closer, but Richard was now in a bad spot as Karl’s confidence was up – he was pulling off all sorts of kills. Karl is a player who can get on particularly hot streaks and that left Richard scrambling in the second as well. The third was closer as Richard dug in hard and Karl cooled off a little. It got all the way to a tie-break, but this went Karl’s way to send Richard to a 8-15, 8-15, 14-16 loss… and a determination to do better in the return later in the summer.

Next on was Jan Brynjolffssen (2) against Matthew Savides. Atypically for the evening, these two were not former teammates – only one previous meeting instead of dozens. That previous clash had started with Matt absolutely waltzing through the first game 15-1 – Jan was determined to improve on that this time by being more dynamic and attacking from the get go, to try and disrupt Matt’s array of kills; despite the warm evening this was still going to be first strike Squash. We can only count this as a partial success as Matt still got away quick, though Jan did drag the score back from 11-4 to somewhat respectability by the end of the game.
The latter period of the first set the pattern for the rest of the encounter as it stayed nip-and-tuck. Jan was having success when he got Matt to move, but he needed to execute well – a couple of rallies that should have been kills were hung up instead, allowing Matt to move forward and counter-kill. This cost the second, and was something of a missed opportunity as Matt was showing signs of early onset fatigue in this game (hot day and a lack of food were blamed), something that only got worse in the third. Jan capitalised to win that comfortably, taking balls early to keep the pressure up and looking to go in behind Matt at every opportunity. The Haileybury player took the last few rallies off to rebuild his reserves to attack the fourth – an effective strategy as he came out all guns blazing for an early lead, something he held to the end as Jan went down to a 9-15, 11-15, 15-6, 9-15 loss.

That meant the evening was Haileybury’s before the top string, which pitted two former Bath Uni team colleagues against each other: Miles Jeanneret (Melbourn) taking on Alex Fuentes (Haileybury).
In their Uni days Miles had been the higher ranked player. However Alex has picked his game up in recent years, and got one over Miles in an encounter last summer for what I believe was his first ever win in the match-up. Alex has continued to get better since, with his Squashlevels up to 5.7k at the start of this one (Miles was on 3.3k). These levels were very evident in a one-sided opening game – the rallies were good, but it always looked like Alex was going to get Miles’ shots back: time and again we had long clean exchanges… that Alex won. Miles did claw a few points back at the death to make the score look more respectable, but without ever threatening a full turn around. Game two was the same… without the late mini-comeback.
Game three called for a change as doing the same thing repeatedly and hoping for different outcomes is a sign of madness.  What Miles opted for was playing against type and becoming Mr Attacking. And this worked! Whether it was a lack of focus from Alex, or simply him being caught out by Miles playing unexpectedly aggressive shots, Miles was back in the contest. There was never more than a point or two in it, with Miles having a couple of points he will look back on wistfully (a tight backhand kill at 12-11 up springs instantly to mind), but sadly it wasn’t quite enough to rescue a point against the head as Miles went down 8-15, 4-15, 13-15.