Broadberry Sports

Tough match last night for us against a very solid Hamilton team, at home, and we were missing our talisman at No.1 – ‘Two James Singhs’😊

So first on at No.5 was Ollie (Millen) v Norman Patterson. Now Norman had won the last encounter between the two and despite the fact that we’d hardly ever mentioned it again to Ollie every week since (especially Cammy!), Ollie was right up for this re-match. He caught Norman cold and won the first game reasonably easily, but then doubled down for the next two games to secure the win and not even give Norman a look-in. Ollie looked very pleased with himself for the rest of the night!

Next up at No.1 was Chris (Murphy) v Kenny Boyle – no one else would referee, so I stepped up, hoping that there wouldn’t be too much controversy…..and there wasn’t! A really good-spirited match of two halves. Chris moved the ball around beautifully in the first two games and Kenny dug in in the next two, getting the ball behind Chris and forcing him to go for a little too much. And so to the 5th! Well, this was a game too far for Chris and he looked a little white around the gills as he came off having been run out of it by Kenny 3-2.

I went on next at No.3 against Chris McGeady and although Chris played really well (and would undoubtedly have beaten me anyway) I just wasn’t on it tonight. Ollie tried to get me to rally more, and he was right! But there just wasn’t any spring in my bungy! 0-3 loss.

It was a similar story for Hamilton’s Chris McCutcheon, as he took on our No.4 ‘Cammy the Kiwi’ Colquhoun. This was a bit of a pumpin’ and Cammy was just too fast – and Chris admitted that it was, “Hopefully the ass-kicking that may get me to train harder and get fit”. 3-0 win for Cammy.

So with the match tied at 2-2 ‘Flash Harry’ (Anderson) took to the court to take on Callum Philips. I was asked, “Who should win this?” and after thinking about it for a few seconds said, “I honestly don’t have a clue!” Callum came out ‘all-guns-a-blazing’ and Harry had to race around the court to get close to the angles being hit; leading a member of the crowd to remark, “It looks like Harry’s not in control of his own legs!” 😊). So Callum won the first game and things were looking ominous! But we needn’t have worried because as soon as Chris had a ‘magic team-talk’ with Harry, everything changed. I’m not entirely sure if Chris was 100% focused with his thoughts about the match, as he had no idea that Harry had lost the first game!! None-the-less, it had the desired effect, because Harry went on to win the next three games and not only win this tie, but also collect the 3 bonus match points as well!

Well they say ‘Revenge is a dish best served cold’ and that may have been true for Ollie’s Norman conquest (!)  but the macaroni was piping hot and there was plenty of it. Even the sceptics went up for seconds and we left with macaroni-carb loading for the next fortnight!