Broadberry Sports

Second team duties tonight for me, but the 1st team were at home against Giffnock so a double match report!

The 2s were up against The Rugby Club and my opponent, Dougie Emery, had asked me to play early as he was off to watch ‘The Manic Street Preachers’ and ‘Suede’ in town, which was ironic as I’d told the Mrs that I couldn’t go to that gig because it was a Wednesday squash night! Don’t tell her if you see her, she’s still annoyed (and although she does proofread these reports, she rarely takes any notice of the content!! Or the jokes!! So I should be OK mentioning it here!). Any-ways-up I managed to beat my old adversary Dougie, but then he was just getting over a cold so it was a good time to play him.

Meanwhile the Giffnock 1st team turned up and watched a bit of my game before getting access to the show court (as the Razzamataz kids exited in full Halloween garb). Sandy went on for the 1st team against Owen ‘Haddaway’ Hadden, which I thought may be a tough one for Sandy, but not a bit of it, as Sandy raced to a 2-0 lead – was a shock on the cards? Well, the old campaigner eventually got into his stride and soon we were into the 5th game! Owen was hitting much tighter in this game and eventually he took the spoils, but Sandy should be very pleased with a good performance.

I was also watching our 2nd team No.3 (Peter Glenday) against the Rugby Club’s Malcolm Campbell. Peter won the first 11-1, but he’d done that last time out and ended up losing the match, so I went down between games to remind him of that! Maybe that spurred him on at 10-10 in the 2nd game! Still no upsets this week as he converted the 2nd game 12-10 and also won the 3rd! So 3 more points to the total.

The 1st team court saw a David Simpson v Mikey Rodgerson at No.5 (apparently they are brother-in-laws/brother-in-laws or something like that?!?) and this was a very good win for David. Mikey was hitting some silky shots, but David just had the legs to run him down.

Back at my match our No.5 Iain “5-setter” McDermott, was getting the run-around by Nairn McMaster and at 0-2 down was looking like he was going to get chopped up! But Iain loves a 5-setter so 2 games later we were into the 5th and at 8-6 up looked like he had a sniff – unfortunately Nairn had a final push left in him and clinched victory from the jaws of defeat to win 11-8 in the fifth.

The No.3 in the 1st team match went on next as Alex ‘pigeon legs’ Hardiman went on against Giffnock’s Stuart Pitt. Some would say that Stu was always going to win this one……. and they’d have been right! Alex was disappointed with his performance but he shouldn’t be too down hearted as Stu is an excellent player and won’t lose too many at No.3.

On my court Jenn Saldanha went on for us against the Rugby Club’s Dan Hackley. Unfortunately, this proved to be a real tough one for Jenn as Dan was dominant on the volley and kept the pace high. Jenn was possibly not at her best tonight, and Dan took the 3 points on this occasion with a good solid performance.

Angus ‘YI’ Forster took on Archie Niven for the 1st team (we were missing a couple of players tonight, so Gus had to step up to the dizzy heights of No.2). After the match Gus said he suspected that after the first few rallies the pace was going to be too much for him and so it proved as Archie won 3-0. Still with a few more games under his belt and hopefully back to No.3/4 he will no doubt be back to winning ways.

So with all to play for in the 2nd team match Peter Meulermann took to the court against Colin ‘the lefty’ Hutton (and talking of people who love a 5-setter, Peter is right up there!). I’ve played Colin a few times so I suggested to keep 101% of play to his backhand side, although I probably should have added “don’t stand in front of him”, as Peter got a stoater of a drive into his leg in the 1st game! (which sparked him into life!). Well I could give you a blow-by-blow account of the first 4 games, but as you’ve probably guessed this went to a 5th and, after a tough physical battle, Col was looking a bit gassed, but as usual Peter probably had another 5 setter left in him – so the upshot was a comfortable 5th set win for Peter and the bonus 3 points to the team (team score 14-8 to us).

Meanwhile on the show court our new No.1 Finlay Halton was playing our old No.1 James Singh…… so this was of great interest to many of the club’s members! It was a tough physical battle alright, but we knew that was going to happen. However, Finlay seemed to attack a bit more than James and so he moved James that bit more. Having said that I was eating pizza with the 2nd team at this point so didn’t see much of the last 2 games, but Finlay won the battle 3-0 so obviously played well (12-8 to Giffnock in the match, but Whitecraigs were only one game away from the spoils!).

So pizza & chips was the fine-dining experience and after the opposition teams left, it was into the back-bar to watch Liverpool win a penalty shoot-out against Chelsea and maybe a pint to celebrate the team win for the 2s!

PS – she laughed!