Entering into the final quarter of the season, things were looking good for the happy band of Bears. ‘Happy’, note, not ‘smug’ thank you very much, Tiger boys. Our second place in the division was earned by hard work, sheer talent, and excellent captaincy in picking the aforementioned talent in the correct order. You can’t teach that sort of skill.
Anyway, we welcomed 1879 - relegation rivals of the Bulls – with Ian giving us helpful advice I’m sure I’ve heard somewhere before, namely “crush the b*****ds”. Well, we would have done but the evening took a curious turn…….
I was first up alongside Adam. Naturally I didn’t see his match against young Joe Yerrell, but by all accounts it was a rather feisty affair. Joe is rapidly improving, but coming up against someone as good as Adam in this division is always likely to puncture balloons, as more than one young gun has found out throughout the season. Joe got quite riled, especially because he was a little slow to clear drops in particular and Adam prides himself on not asking for a let if there is the remotest chance of getting the ball. This meant things got a little intimate at times, which wasn’t to Joe’s liking. His mood wasn’t improved by only getting 4 points all match, and he sat shell shocked in the dressing room for quite some time afterwards. I popped in to towel between every game of my 5 setter and he was still sitting there staring at the wall. Must have been bad.
Meanwhile, I was up at #3 against big Dave Walden, an extremely pleasant fellow who belies his corpulent frame with very assured racquet work. I hadn’t played for a week, and being naturally talentless played the most awfully predictable rubbish for the first two games. In fact, the only redeeming feature of those games was a disputed call by Richard Graham which split both players, the watching gallery, and eventually even the marker. This led to the accusation of marking by committee, so Richard took a firm grip of the situation by shooing Trevor and the rest away from watching our court and onto the next. It’s a brilliantly simple solution to getting rid of Jones and one I recommend to all markers.
Oh, and I finally got my squash head on thanks to some astute coaching from Andrew Egan and beat Dave quite comfortably in the end 3-2. I even played a trickle boast in the final game for the first and probably only time this season. Don’t know what came over me. Won’t happen again.
So, 2-0 and all going to plan. Then the fun started. Phil Alexander had gone on to replace Adam and happily started to thump Steve French. Richard went on at #5 to play their captain Roger Hill and started brightly enough, narrowly losing the first game 8-10, before his abductor muscle went loudly and painfully. He soldiered on, but given that Roger could barely move himself due “age-related crap” (his words), it was an unedifying spectacle as a game and Richard eventually lost 3-0.
Meanwhile, Phil had gone 2-0 up and was about to complete the match victory when there was a knock on the door and two regular members informed the players that they had booked that court. Pandemonium ensued. It turned out that an admin error on the part of the club had failed to book out four courts for the whole evening for both our match and the ladies match. The girls were still playing on both their courts, the two members insisted they wanted to play, and there were no other courts. After much waving of arms and angry words from us and team huddles from them, Roger approached me almost sheepishly and said “it’s a difficult situation…” Phil, the experienced campaigner and gentleman par excellence, spared him having to finish the sentence and conceded the rubber.
Pause for breath. 2-2 and Adam mute with fury. The atmosphere was crackling. It all boiled down to Andrew Egan at #4 against Chris Butler, a tall lanky chap with quick feet and a good reach. Because of his day job, Andrew is an early bird and, we have now discovered, does not play well late at night. Point for captain to note. He was easily better than Chris, yet played like a complete cock and allowed his opponent to peg him to 2-2 despite winning the first and fourth quite comfortably.
The tension in the gallery was palpable, and the ghost of Piggin was heard to boom “win, you Welsh git”. Or that might have been me. Can’t remember. Anyway, like his beloved rugby team are bound to do on Saturday in Cardiff, Egan ran out of energy and capitulated at the death.
Disaster. That admin error cost us a victory and more importantly handed 7 precious points to a relegation rival of the Bulls. I sincerely hope the club does not come to regret it. This must never happen again.
Round 2 of this back-to-back took place up at Chesham Bois where we took on their Juniors, who were lying one place behind us in the division. This is the team which features young Amy Jones, my near-nemesis of earlier in the season, so naturally I ensured that I was as far away from Chesham as I could arrange – Bahrain as it turned out – so that I didn’t have to face her again. It was a somewhat depleted team due to a lot of absences of the regulars, but on paper still looked a strong one: Dave Powell, Phil Alexander, Olly Reeves, Lady Bear and Trevor Jones (the other one, before you think I’ve gone madder than a UKIP candidate). Phil has e-mailed me a report which is a bit thin on detail so I’ll pad it out with my usual strict adherence to the truth.
Dave Powell has been injured of late but said he would be back in time for the match. I had (rashly) assumed that he meant he’d been away on one of his regular skiing breaks and would come back fit as a fiddle. Regrettably, he’d been away on a drinking weekend and apparently came back looking less like a fiddle and more like a tuba, and a hung over one at that, even two days later. He lost “to a young lad” (the clue is in the team name Phil – any clue as to his name?) 3-1.
Captain Koko (don’t get used to the name, I’m back next week) went on at 2 and “stuffed” Peter. Well, 3-1 could be read in many ways but at least he got an uninterrupted game this week, ho hum.
Olly played a blinder, apparently, against Tom Orminston who is nobody’s fool. A tight match which Olly won 3-2 which means that he is now unbeaten in his last three matches and all of them 5 setters. So much for doubts as to his fitness and ability to win. He has definitely come good a little late and is rapidly turning into a banker (not that sort of “0608 train or you’re a part-timer” City banker Olly – calm down) for a win wherever I play him. Just what a captain needs at the end of the season, though his availability with young George about to make his appearance in the world any day now could be limited. (STOP PRESS – congratulations to both Jemma and Olly on the recent splendid news, from all the Bears. We are sure Olly did a splendid job, and can we have him back for Buckingham on the 19th please?)
So, 2-1 up and all to play for, but sadly Jo didn’t have one of her best nights apparently and went down 1-3, and young (sic) Trevor must have had some stage fright as he lost as well 0-3. Phil says he is capable of playing much better than that.
So, a close match which we eventually lost 16-8. This puts the Juniors just 10 points behind us with a game in hand so it is a close race for the second spot behind the magnificent champions–to-be: the Tigers. All to play for then as we head for our last two matches of the season. Did I mention that we beat the Tigers recently…?
No comments:
Post a Comment