Monday 8 December 2008

Grange 3 versus Waverley 3 Friday 5th December 2008.

The Grange 3 juggernaut roles on with another 17 point haul to add to the last four weeks of excellent results.

At no 5 Russell Langley played a very good, fast, hard hitting match against Richard Nettleton. Some resistance from Richard in the third game but overall Russell too strong, running out to a 3-1 win. A 6-1 winning record for the first half of the season.

At no 4 we saw exactly the same pattern for Jonathon Frame against Neil Aitken. Jonathan played fast but controlled squash and was almost always in command with only one game of sterner resistance from Neil allowed to slip away. A comfortable 3-1 win. That's three good wins and one loss for Jonathon in the first half.

At No 3 Mark Dutton had a convincing 3-0 win over John Allan. For a change he came out of the blocks properly and picked up a 9-0 with only a few handouts conceded and will hopefully be able to keep in that mindset. A number of unnecessary first game losses was the only real blemish in a good first half of the season that saw a 5-1 winning record.

At No 2 Christy had a very entertaining match against the unorthodox but very effective Neil Tulloch (hang on...that's Christy too..). The term unorthodox doesn't so much refer to the style of play as they both are clearly very accomplished players, but more to the highly unusual directions that the ball takes around the court from all of the reverse boasts and and other such malarky. A togh one for Christy against a good opponent and a 3-1 win the result. That's a 2-2 record for Christy in the thirds so far.

In one of the most entertaining matches of the season, Patrick Langley took on Chris Jeffrey at No 1. ny casual observer walking past the court at almost any time during this match would have been forgiven for thinking that the result was a foregone conclusion in Patrick's favour. While Patrick seemed to be well in control and looked to have plenty to spare, the older Chris was a lather of sweat and puffing his near-to-last breath at almost all times. Somehow though he always managed to stay in the rallies and return some of the pressure and gradually started to bring some mistakes out of Patrick's game. This particular author has now seen quite a few of Patrick's matches and minileagues and has certianly never seen him miss as many volleys and drops as he did in a quite inexplicable sequence in the third and fourth games. All credit to Chris though for working so hard to help make that happen. The final game was a see-saw affair and could have gone both ways but Chris discovered a liking for the front backhand corner and played a series of near unreturnable drops that had Patrick in knots quite a few times. Nobody begrudged Chris his moment of Henman0like fist pumping when he finally took the last point since he'd worked so hard against an opponent who would have beaten him on most other occasions. A 2-3 loss for Patrick on the night and a 3-1 winning record for Patrick in the thirds in this half of the season (all other matches 3-0 too..).

Looking at the ESSA points table, we stil don't seem to be able to shake off ESC and Inveresk so those two matches will be key to teh second half and we'll be looking to do better than the 7 points we took off both those sides.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Juggernauts are fine, as long as they don't have to turn a corner.

A.Truck Driver

Anonymous said...

Yeah, Looby's been said to have the turning circle of a lorry on court. Or as they say in Ireland, milk would turn quicker.