Broadberry Sports

Happy New Year everyone!

As Newlands was so far away tonight, Ollie offered to drive me to the match and so I was looking forward to the traditional Newlands pizzas and Erdinger all day!

First on tonight was Chris (Murphy) at No.2 v Dave Morrison. I’d managed to beat Dave in the first half, so I didn’t hold up too much hope for his chances and so when Chris started playing Mizuki’s off the deck, at 2-0 up in the 1st game, I was sure this would be our first win of the night! And so it proved, Chris was dominant and he even got better as the match went on when he started playing a better length. So 3-0 to Chris

Ollie (Millen) took on Euan Allison next at No.5 and this was a repeat of the 1st half match up – Ollie has been training, if you include running to the pub every night! And when I say running, I mean walking!! Having said that Ollie looked to be moving well tonight, and he had to be as Euan loves a run – and he moved Ollie well to go 2-0 up. However, in the 3rd game Ollie got a second wind as he came back from 10-7 down to win 12-10. But the fuel must have been running on empty after that, as Euan won 3-1. A good team point though.

While all that was going on Flash Harry (Anderson) and James (Newlands) Singh – there’s only two James Singhs!  – took the spare court and this was another re-match of the first half. James won last time, but Harry was fired up for this one – alternatively James was still getting over the celebration of a significant birthday! (he only looks about 20, so I was surprised to hear that life is just about to begin for him!!). Anyway the upshot was that Harry was on fire tonight and whenever he saw me watching he swiped at another Mizuki and then grinned at me as if to say, “Put that in your match report, big yin!”. So an easy-ish win for Harry.

I went on against Mick Cockburn next and although I’ve not been playing much over the Christmas period, I have been on court coaching a lot so I felt like I was in shape (round’s a shape!). I think I caught Mick cold last night as I got a great start. Mick was trying to get into a rhythm and I was trying to react to his bullet shots buzzing around the court. But it was my night tonight and I scrambled well to react to the pace and then was able to keep it reasonably tight. So a 3-0 win for me.

Just then Dave Fallis arrived to play James (Whitecraigs Singh) – there’s only two James Singhs! – and I nipped off to have a quick shower, but it obviously wasn’t quick enough as when I came back I only saw the last 2 points. James (as ever) has been training hard and he must have caught Dave unprepared as he won this encounter in double quick time!

So a 4-1 win for the team and 16 points to the total and up to the bar for the aforementioned beer & pizza. The youngsters at one end of the table talking about clubbing and the adults at the other end of the table talking about how to live off 4% on a million quid!

Shortly after most of the lads took the short hop home to Whitecraigs to watch Mike (Martin) win his match at No.1 in the 2nds (v SSRC) with an epic 3-2 victory! And then he also had an epic darts match against Chris!

Let’s hope 2023 brings less viruses and war and more squash…. and darts!