Broadberry Sports

At 3pm today I was in sunny Spain having a relaxing time on the beach, but just a few hours later I battled my way through Storm Barney (when did we start naming storms?) to reach Strathgryffe a little late, at around 7.15pm – but it turns out I was very early!

First up tonight and starting early (as he had to leave early) was Joe against Dave at number five. When I arrived the pair were having some humongous rallies and I thought this must be really close. However I soon learned that they were just playing a friendly as Joe had already won! Well he obviously wasn’t that keen to get away! Still 3 points on the board for us!

The number 4s went on next as Doug took on Graham Proud. I had never seen Graham play before and was impressed with his range of shots. This wasn’t one of Doug’s finest games however and he was well beaten.

My opponent still hadn’t turned up so next on at No.1 were Craig against Martin Woods. This was an interesting game as it appears that Craig is now in a position to really challenge Martin. I had the pleasure of marking this one and I said to both players before they went on “Call your own pickups and don’t moan at my decisions” Craig replied that he could only do one of these requests so I would have to pick!

This game was all about whether Craig could put enough physical pressure on Martin to tire him out. After the 1st I was sure he could, but when Martin came back and won the 2nd things were not quite as certain. However Craig knuckled down and really made Martin work harder and harder as the match progressed. It was soon obvious that Martin didn’t have the legs to run all of Craig’s rallies down. So a good 3-1 win for Craig – although neither man seem to want to take the last point and in the end it took an amazing fluke from Craig to secure the match (I would be inclined to give Craig MOTM again this week).

Still no sign of my opponent so on at No.2 was Jason Lang returning to his old club against Ross (Red) Lawrie. Jason has been playing very well recently and so I thought he would be too strong for Ross. But squash constantly surprises you and Ross was playing brilliantly and his range of shots was amazing. Every time Jason went cross-court, Ross was on it in a flash and often volleying away a winner or playing some ridiculously good shot!

So could Jase keep the ball to a good length and straight? Well at 2-2 in games it appeared that he couldn’t do it often enough; so now it was anyone’s game! Ross was putting away all services on the volley time after time and Jason was struggling to straighten the shots, so consequently Ross was dominating the ‘T’ and putting Jason’s cross-court returns away. It was all very close in the end (about 10-10) and it was a shame that the match finished on a stroke, but there you have it and Ross fully deserved the 3-2 victory. MOTM to Ross for them I would say.

Still no sign of my opponent Dave McCormack at 9:05pm – however I was told that he was on his way direct from work. We eventually started around 9:30pm and I was told later that we finished just 12 minutes later. I won 3-0 quite comfortably although the last two rallies in the 3rd game were particularly tough.

So I went for a shower, but Dave just put his clothes on and went back to work (well that’s the first for me in 35 years of league squash!).

The pizzas were even later than Dave! But they were worth waiting for especially the vegetarian one! We chatted all things squash and what could be better than that for a Wednesday night out!

And later, when I did that Facebook thing to see what the main words that I used on Facebook this year were, I don’t think anyone will be too surprised to see the results!

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