National League finals - Sun, Jun 16

Last minute call-up Angus MacPherson joined us at the Fountain Park rendezvous along with Aoife Kerrin and Gordon Sloan, Kevin Moran being the nominated driver. Without our usual #2 who was probably nursing a sore head on the flight back from Mulhouse after his heroics in the Worlds.
   We arrived at Bridge of Allan at 9:30am with our opponents a full-strength ESC showing up soon after. First on was Aoife versus Senga Macfie and Aoife proved she was not a morning person as she took  2 games to get going on the glass-back. Angus MacPherson made his league debut at 14 years old against Jacques Laas and acquitted himself well once he got over his nerves in the first game. Gordon Sloan faced Ross McHoul and got some good scores. At this point we were 0-3 down so the #1 was a dead rubber. Simon gave it a go in the first game of the match getting a good lead but Kevin upped his game, got everything (and I mean everything) back and won it. Simon admitted after that game he knew he'd "have to blow a gasket" to get anything out of it and he would probably still lose so he tried to slow it down but Kevin was having none of it: 3-0 and we were on the scoreboard.
   In the other semi next door, some very close matches as an under-strength Dalgety Bay took on an under-strength Giffnock. Morgan McGuire won 3-1 for Giffnock but then Richard Northin & Neil Bennett struck back for the Bay against Matthew Stout and Owen Hadden respectively. It went down to the wire but Allan Tasker beat Stuart George at #1 & Dalgety got through 3-1.

   After lunch we took to court again for the bronze playoff. Aoife was up to speed now and played very strongly on the volley drops to beat Morgan McGuire 3-0. Angus improved again with a strong match versus Matthew Stout and Gordon Sloan was feeling the effect of a wedding the day before as Owen Hadden cleaned him out. So Kevin Moran took to court to see if he could win 3-0 and salvage 3rd palce for Grange. A highly entertaining shootout with Stuart George was Kevin do just that, now it was 2-2 on matches, 6-6 on games countback and we never found out what it was on rallies-countback as we had to leave early.
   ESC subsequently beat Dalgety in the final with wins for Senga 3-0 over Elspeth, Jacques 3-0 over Neil and Ross taking a games off Allan to make it academic what the result was between Simon and Iain Tennant who turned up from his medical finals.
    Overall an enjoyable set of finals, good blooding of Angus and Kevin Moran emerging as the only person undefeated in the league having played all matches. Next year the stags plan to go one better under Director of Squash Cockburn!
Thanks to all players who represented, to Francos Pizza and Titan Rackets for sponsoring and to those who supported or took an interest over the season.