An excellent result for Scotland’s squad in Portugal at the 2012 Under 19 European Team Championships.
The No.11 seeds included Harrow’s Dougie Kempsell, Rosie Allan and Kirsty Lobban as well as Jamie Henderson and Chris Leiper; and they performed brilliantly in the ‘Pool C’ matches beating most impresssively Germany, but also Holland and Poland. These wins secured them a quater-final match against the Czech Republic which they also won 3-0.
The team then went on to play England in the semi-final, where unfortunately they narrowly lost 2-1 (to the eventual winners) but none the less they were the only team to take a tie from England.
In the 3rd/4th place play off match they eventually lost out to France 2-1, but to finish 4th, having been seeded 11th, was a massive achievement and the best result for almost 25 years (since 1988).
A special mention must got to Harrow’s Dougie Kempsell who won 7 out of 7 matches in the Tournament – a fabulous achievement.
Paul Bell, Mark Ford, Peter O'Hara, Malky Watt & Paul Sweeney
Newlands needed 6 points to win the Division 1 West league and with Peter O’Hara, Paul Bell, Mark Ford, Malky Watt and Paul Sweeney (pic left) they were looking odds on to do that.
So first on tonight were Jason Lang and me. Jason was playing Paul Sweeney at No.5 and I was up against Mark Ford at No.3 – now I’d recently sneaked a game off Mark in a National League match (when he wasn’t looking) so I was pretty sure that he’d have both eyes on me this time and I wasn’t too surprised to find that he was watching me like a hawk. Sean marked for the first time in a year, proving he can mark even without glasses (I checked a couple of times by deliberately cheating!!).
By the way, fair warning to all my future opponents, I’ve decided I’m now old enough to start developing an old man’s high lob serve! And I must say it’s really funny to see good players struggle against it. I had a couple of free (and very funny) points against Mark doing just that and now all I have to do is remember to get the serve more!
So with no match tonight this is the alternative Wednesday match report!
It all started at Whitecraigs when I was coaching a young lad called Steven. He’s only about 9 but he’s pretty good and I got him running around like a good ‘un for an hour! He came off exhausted and happy. And his dad was very impressed with the improvement in his squash (I was equally impressed with the wad of 50s he paid me with). So a beer in the bar later and I was watching the Whitecraigs LT&SC 5 th team.
It was the official West over 35′s touring side taking on the Northern Ireland league champs, the Civil Service (CS) team. Well I say official, but of course it wasn’t official coz Peter O’Harrow would be missing from the official team* of Owen, Logers and me.
So like a crack o’35 side we were in the bar at the airport and discussed beasting another before departure, but being the professional Owen is (lightweight) he talked us out of it. So we were met by the CS No.1 Dave (Ayerst) who picked us up from George Best Airport and was first on court against Owen (Hadden). Great game this one. Dave gave Owen the run around in the 1st (11-5) and it was difficult to see how Owen was going to make any headway here at all. Dave had a great drive that pinned Owen to the back of the court and not only that, but all of Owen’s half-volley-topspun-crosscourt shots (HVTSCC for short!) were going in the tin……….. (press read more to see the full report)
I spoke to Logie (Iain Logan) earlier this week to organise things for tonight and happened to ask who I was playing. He said it would be Dave Kelly – and he’s been in training all week to play you, by running round large trees and roundabouts!………………………………………………….. Bloody cheek!
Well it was a strange old match last night as a couple of the ties were quite one sided, the first being at No.5. The Western No.5 had told no one that he was away this week, but he must have been as he wasn’t there! So we won 3-0 – well played Jase (Lang).
To see David Lloyd Renfrew match reports click here
To see David Lloyd West End match reports click here
Back to normal tonight and a trip to deepest darkest Maryhill for a match against SSRC.
Now the “West Senior Ranking & Junior B” Tournament had been held at the club over the weekend and had produced not only some very interesting results, but had also affected our team order. The event was won by Harrow’s Dougie Kempsell and not only did he beat Chris Fergusson in the final, but he also beat Kev (Moran) in the semi-final with the added spice of having the DLR West League No.1 spot up for grabs! …..Cont’d below
To see David Lloyd Renfrew match reports click here
To see David Lloyd West End match reports click here
An excellent result for Scotland’s squad in Portugal at the 2012 Under 19 European Team Championships.
