Captain Kangaroo writes:
Bears vs Tigers: lost 2-3 (6-13)
The match-up against the 2nds is always going to be a big game for either the Bulls or the Bears and so it was nice that our encounter seemed to feature all three teams in some form or other. Gareth’s interesting squad policy of ‘quality not quantity’ means that he is forever nicking players from other teams, and since we aren’t into cannibalism we ended up facing a couple of Bulls masquerading as Tigers, in a sort of weird Darwinian acid trip. A close match, but yet again we walked away the wrong side of a 2-3 scoreline. It’s becoming a habit, as indeed is having one player go crook on the night. Honestly: when I get 5 players fit on one evening in one squash club, we win. It’s only happened once this season…
Adam made short work of Chris, and those who saw it likened it to a man repeatedly throwing a stick for a dog to retrieve. I know Chris is built like a whippet but that still sounds a bit harsh to me. Phil Alexander was unavailable but luckily Dave Powell wasn’t, and it was certainly an intruiging match to watch the misfiring brutality of Davies come up against the still-rusty but sheer class of DP. The big man huffed and puffed but couldn’t blow down Powell’s elegantly constructed game. 3-0.
So far, things were looking good for us but then the traditional lower order collapse happened, starting with Olly who had claimed that acupuncture and physio had worked wonders on his calf. They hadn’t. Gareth had one of his easier nights and wasn’t needed beyond two games. He was still warming down 50 mins later though. I had my usual grindingly monotonous game against The Pig, as neither of us are brave / talented enough to go for winners and so we just endlessly hit the ball up & down the wall for what seems like hours. It must be very tedious to watch, sorry. Ian usually grinds out the first two games and then suddenly decides to go for his shots in the third and I get blown away. This was no exception, other than the fact that EVERYTHING he tried came off spectacularly. But I’m not bitter. Honest.
It all then came down to Phil Collings, our resident copper, to try and arrest Coops in his tracks (see what I”ve done there? Quality writing, that). I had a sense of doom about the game as Coops is playing well at the minute, but it turned out to be the best contest of the night. I guess we all enjoy playing against certain styles, and Coops seemed to be to Phil’s liking. The rallies were long and varied, and the initiative see-sawed constantly. In the end, Coops’ superior game experience showed and he played the right shot at the right time more often than Phil did and deserved to win a tight 3-0. Great stuff.
So, a strange evening’s squash where most of it was one-sided but with pockets of competitive battling. The usual (lovely) food wasn’t available that night so we switched to the back-up plan of fish & chips. It did provide the highlight of the evening in the form of Adam trying to explain to an ignorant northerner what exactly a saveloy is, and Neil complaining bitterly that it isn’t a sausage, which is what he had ordered. Mind, he had ordered it unbattered because he didn’t want “anything lardy”, but then hopefully asked if they did pineapple fritters. I may be an ignorant northerner, but aren’t fritters….?
Away to Chesham 1879. Lost 1-4 (4-16)
I had high hopes for this one. Rumour had it that Charlie Yerrell was doing a university course and wasn’t playing for them any more, which meant that his younger brother Joe would be playing at 1 and thus court fodder for Adam. Phil Alexander was back at 2 and I’d won at 3 the last match of the season in April. Plus the fact that Lady Bear Jo Smalley was back and hungry after her injury in the club champs. The rankings put her at 5, so with the top two winning that gave us a definite win and it was just a question of whether Phil Collings or I could grab more points at 3 & 4.
Well, that plan turned out to be b******ks. The Curse of the Bears struck again with Adam going down with stomach cramps that morning and showed up only out of a driving sense of loyalty rather than being in bed, where he should have been. Oh, and Charlie’s uni course starts next week and so this was his last match of the season (thanks). Oh, and they brought in a ringer at 2 and Phil A had played one more match that week than he should have and never got out of the blocks. Oh, and that meant that Joe played down at 3 and he is a third of my age….
You get the picture. Phil got blown off court by Simon de Conaich, Phil Collings couldn’t cope with Steve French’s excellent touch at the front of court, and after nearly 10 mins Joe and I were still only 0-2. It’s hard to describe the feeling of battling as hard as you can, to near exhaustion, and yet inexorably slowly you are losing and it’s only halfway through the first game. At times like that, you wonder why you play such a stupid sport that hurts too much.
There were only two highlights of an otherwise depressing evening: the first was Lady Bear utterly crushing her opponent Dave Walden, who was admittedly slightly overweight but irritatingly skillful nonetheless. Most impressive was Jo being 1-8 down in the third and coming back to take it 10-8. She’s back, and not before time. If she can start winning at 4 or 3 we are cooking on gas.
The second highlight was the utterly mesmerizing game between Charlie and a below-par Adam. I’m pretty sure that had Adam been fit he would have beaten the elder Yerrell, but to say he went down fighting is an understatement. The quality of squash was easily First Division, with twists and turns that drew gasps from the crowd from the club which had gathered to watch. One shot in particular lives in the memory: Adam had wrong-footed his opponent and sent a powerful volley past him. In the blink of an eye Charlie spun round and caught the ball on the volley against the back wall. It looped up and just clipped the front on it’s way down. The shot was so unexpected in its brilliance that even Adam could only stand and applaud like the rest of us. It’s watching games like that when you realize why we play such a stupid sport which hurts so much. A shame it had to end and in a 1-3 defeat for Adam, his first (and only?) of the season.
We need a win, folks…….
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