Broadberry Sports

Hands up who loves squash 🙋‍♂️

First match of the season and playing West Team Squash with the lads again (James, Chris, Harry, me and Ollie) is as good as I ever remember. As I left for the club I kissed the Mrs good-by and she wished me ‘good-luck’ and I wished her ‘Happy Birthday’!

Scotstoun came calling tonight and that could mean anything with this opposition, but they were missing one or two players this week, so the only question was – ‘could we take advantage?’

You know when you don’t feel ready for the first game of the season, and you haven’t been playing as much as you should? Well experience told me that quite often the opposition think exactly the same as you! (one of the Scotstoun team even admitted “I haven’t hit a squash ball since the last match of last season!”)

First up for us was Chris (Murphy) against Archie Niven. Archie was playing really well and I could see the massive strides he’d made since I’d last seen him; unfortunately you can play as well as you want, but coming up against Chris is a different kettle of fish! When Chris unleashed the ‘Mizuki’ backhand boast in the first game (shot of the night!) you could see he was in charge and that was really the story of the match! Archie played really well, but Chris was just a cut-above and never really looked like he was going to lose (3-0 to Chris).

Next on was me against fellow Whitecraigs LTC member, Craig Rothnie. Obviously, Craig felt confident as he wanted to make this a ‘West League/Whitecraigs Mini-league double-header’! Well, I couldn’t refuse THAT challenge, could I? But at 0-1 down I was wondering if I’d made a good choice. The whole team had advice for me in-between games and they all gave me some golden nuggets that I could work with! So, 0-1 became 2-1 to me and I was wrestling back control of my slow start. Craig was beginning to give me a few more chances and I was more than happy to take them as quickly as possible and managed to close out the match 3-1.

Next up was ‘2-James Singhs’ against Sandy Niven at No.1 – now James & Sandy train together and so this may have seemed that things were tight, but in match-play things can often be very different. To me James looked in control of the match and although Sandy had flashes of brilliance, James was able to nip these moments in the bud and so he won a comfortable match 3-0.

Ollie (Millen) was on next against Jonny Neil at No.5 and as Ollie hasn’t been playing much we wondered if he would be able to stay the course of a tough match. However, we needn’t have worried, as he was largely able to defend the challenging shots and take advantage of the loose balls to create winning positions – so with his new Harrow Spark racket, he brought the tie home 3-0 (I’m glad it didn’t go to 5 games though!).

Last up was ‘The Flashman’ – but without his Flash-Harry golden rackets! Now Harry (Anderson) HAS been on court since last season and his opponent Finlay McGee hadn’t; well Harry is hard enough to beat if you’re training hard, so no massive surprise that he won the tie 3-0 (and the match) and threw in a few Mizukies just because he can’t help not doing them! Great 5-0 win for the team.

Over burgers & chips in the Back-Bar after the match, I said that the best thing about being in this particular team was that the whole group were all still in our twenties!!!?!??!?! It was great to see Jonny and Finn my “ex-David Lloyd West End” team mates (Jonny was even still wearing the old Optical Express DLWE team shirt!). They both asked me who was the longest running Division 1 West League regular? …………………….. is it me?????? Thanks for making me feel really old guys! (note to self – must nip into the petrol station on the way home and get a birthday card! M.W.O.T.M. to Dawn for putting up with me!).