Grange Squash

Grange 3 v Waverley 4 - Monday 23rd Feb 2009

After weeks of humbling all comers, the Grange thirds were put firmly back in their place by a very good Waverley 4 side, to the tune of a 19-7 loss.

The evening started well enough with Mark Dutton at No5 taking on Scary Backhand Man (a.k.a John Usher). This was a very tough struggle for Mark against the only man to beat him in the season to date. An absorbing encounter saw the first four games shared but with John well on top in the fourth and the match seemingly going away. Mark found himself very quicky 2-7 down in the fifth but dug in to stop the rot and over a number of tense hand-out sequences managed to contrive a 9-7 victory. 3-2 match result.

Pete Cockburn made a good start at No4 against the young David Munro and just missed out on the first 8-10. After that though, his week-long cold/flu started to increasingly take its toll and David dominated more and more as Pete weakened and the 0-3 eventual loss was near enough inevitable.

At number 3 the ever-reliable Mike Scott turned out to be not quite so reliable on this one occasion. Mike wasn't particularly happy with his own match, but in fairness he did run into a Damien Noade who was having his own personal match-of-the-season. Mike never really got a foot in the door on the night and was under pressure from Damien at all times for a 0-3 loss.

A very similar story for our other Mr Reliable, Alan Stokes at No 2. On the day, Donald Shearer played some superb squash and Alan was only able to resist the onslaught for brief periods each game. 0-3 on the night.

The night finished up with Patrick Langley at No1 looking to restore some respectability to the scorecard against Allan Ramsay. It looked very much like that would be a formality after two quite comfortable games went Patrick's way and we were all planning an early tuck-in to the soup, pizzas and beer. Trouble is that Allan suddenly started to play squash....and Patrick kinda stopped. Allan took the third and then the fourth was a whitewash (not so much as hand-out) and at 2-8 down in the fifth Patrick was staring down the barrel of a defeat. Patrick, though, is made of sterner stuff than that and instead chose to interpret this position as the opportunity for a heroic comeback. He duly went on to win the eight rallies that he required to close out the match. Trouble was that Allan also won the other eight rallies that went in between those and after some ten minutes the score was still 2-8. The inevitable finally happened and Patrick was unable to save a ninth match point and a 2-3 loss was the result.

The 7-19 result (incl referee bonus points) was a fair reflection of the night and now leaves the Thirds pretty certain to finish in 3rd place behind Inveresk and Waverley 4.