SUMMER LEAGUE MONDAY NIGHT WEEK 1 ROUND-UP

Published 15/05/2018 at 08:47:43 by David Wackrill; edited 1 times, last on 22/05/2018 at 09:52:30 by David Wackrill.

 DIV 1 
 
This is the 8th year of the 2-a-side League. It’s been a strong competition in the past but not so in recent times. Champions How Small won at a canter last year, having finished 4th the year before, and will be hot favourites again this Summer. They opened their defence of the title with a workmanlike 4-1 win over new side Ijebu Warriors. The first 3 sets were plain sailing but the last 2 proved tricky for them. Jordi Armat Foraster won the point for Warriors with a fine 7 game victory over Nick Howard, resisting a late comeback from Nick to serve an ace at 10-9. Then the final set also went the distance as Guy Sparrow made heavy weather os seeing off the challenge from Ricky Taiwo.
 
Veteran star Alan Cherry has played in 101 of Spinners 104 matches so far and only lost 14 (to Matt Evans, Craig Brown 4 each, Dave Murphy 2, Julian Adams, Dave Buckley, Kelvin Choong and Dan Smalley) of his 202 sets. Quite a record. He was in action as usual with Summer regular Pete Tillotson against the Sweet N Sour duo of Julie Snowdon and Terry Lau, who are another regular pairing. Terry and Julie did well to beat Pete but they have a terrible doubles record and this let them down again as Spinners ran out 3-2 winners.
 
I’m delighted to have the services of multiple Top 8 champion Andy Smith at my disposal for my resurrected Stormers team this Summer. However we got off to a shocking start, going down 3-2 to Topspin's Russell Penn and Mervyn Kelly who were on fire for this one, Andy alone struggling to 2 singles wins against the big hitting pair.


DIV 2 (courtesy of Mike Ainsworth)
 
Classics 0 Towcester 5
Hit n Hope 0 Phoenix 5
Swifts 4 Blades 1
 
A few eyebrows were raised at seeing the Towcester team of Ian Brown and Iain Lindsay in Division Two and they duly confirmed their position as division favourites with a 5-0 demolition of a Classics team of Barbara Peters and Masood Nassor.
 
Hit n Hope were also on the end of a 5-0 loss against Phoenix with just the first set of Gerald Ridgeway against Mike Ainsworth going close with Gerald edging it 4-2. Constantin (?) was man of the match with two 4-0 wins against Mike Ainsworth and Andy Frearson.
 
The only match not to end up in a whitewash was played on table six and although the sole win for Blades was for Bill Tyler against Mo Duncan, Blades were perhaps a little unlucky not to win at least one more set in a 4-1 defeat that looked closer than the score suggests.