Broadberry Sports

So away to SSRC tonight and the main question was would they have their No.1 player Ali Prott (World PSA Ranking 108) from Edinburgh? I hope not or this would be another long night! (sorry for the lack of a report from last week, but I was snowed under and, as ever, it was absolutely nothing to do with the fact that we got horsed! (they’re a good team Strathgryffe with John Meehan – PSA 318 – and Harry Barron at No.1 & 2 – could finish in the top 2 if they can get those players out every week).

Anyway, back to tonight and James, Chris and I, along with our team manager (!) Bruce battled the traffic, and storm Ciaran, across town to Maryhill to SSRC, the oldest private members’ club in the country. First up was Chris (Murphy) v Jesse Mills. Well, there is still a lack of reporting, as I didn’t see this one, as I was on court at the same time. However, it was over pretty quickly as Chris was playing really well and Jesse had a back issue, but a good 3-0 to kick the evening off for us.

As I said I was on at the same time, against Chris Holt a No.4. I’d seen that Chris had won a Masters Tournament at Inverness last weekend, so I knew I’d have to play well to get anything tonight. And I did play well (I know! I was surprised as well!) – actually, I was pleasantly surprised to feel really good tonight and when I took a 2-0 lead, I was delighted that my plans were working and many of my shots were coming off (must be a leap-year!). In-between games Chris got some great advice from his teammates and started to drag me back by winning the 3rd game. The 4th game was also really close, but fortunately for me, Chris made a couple of errors just at the right time, and I sneaked home 3-1.

Next on was Ollie (Millen) against Andrew Roberts and I missed the early skirmishes, but I did see from 1-1 and both players were making a few errors, but unfortunately for us, Ollie was making a few more (this was high risk/high reward squash!). Andrew won the 3rd game, but at 8-9 in the 4th game, could Ollie take it to the 5th? Well the answer was ultimately ‘no’ but he did well to get so close and so it was 1 more point to the team total.

The No.1 clash was up next as James (2 James Singh’s) took on Dan Wearing. Well, this was the tie of the night and both players probably deserve MOTM for the exhaustive 3-2 performance. Dan had a great start, by winning the first 2 games and James was equally magnificent at coming back to get the 3rd and 4th! And so to the 5th!! All of our team were down in-between games to support James and hopefully give the odd golden nugget of “in-between game advice”. At the start of the 5th game, Dan took a great 3-0 start which ultimately gave him a platform to go to 8-6 up and now it was anyone’s! Dan is a great competitor, but then so is James and at 11-11 it could have gone either way. And it did, as Dan kept the tempo high and brought the tie home 13-11 (3-2).  

So with the match tied at 2-2, it was all down to Flash Harry (Anderson) v Brian Robertson at No.4. Well, this was a bit one-sided with Harry playing really well to win the tie 3-0 and there was really nothing Brian could have done tonight. Brian did play well, especially in the last game getting to 8-9 before Harry nicked the last couple of points. The Flashman was in exuberant form with all the right shots…………………….. but not necessarily in the right order! (the oldies will enjoy that gag!)

So some really nice food at SSRC (courtesy of my old team mate Rob McMillan from DLWE) and then it was back across ‘rain town’ to celebrate the win in the Whitecraigs Back Bar – we even got a second dinner and some onion rings!