PREMIER/DIV 1 ROUND-UP WEEK 5
Published 19/10/2019 at 13:30:09 by David Wackrill.
PREMIER DIVISION
SPINNERS MISS OUT ON TOP SPOT
Leaders Greenleys Kings keep turning out their big Summer signing Matt Haynes, and just as well for them this week as his hat-trick helped secure a 6-4 win against club-mates Warriors, thanks to good support from Nick Howard with a brace and the doubles between them. A bad night for Guy Sparrow however against his ‘bogey’ team, who he also lost 3 against last time. Warriors dug deep into their 10-man squad to give a debut to Tony Gorman, who last played in MK thirty years ago. Tony was the County no 2 junior in his day, quite the local teenage sensation of the time, and was a team-mate of mine in the 1987 Bucks club cup final, which we lost. Why don’t they have competitions like that anymore? He’s done well for himself since then of course in the Oxford area and notched up a good double here with Ricky Taiwo and Ollie Horswell winning one each.
2nd placed Spinners had another relatively easy week, with the promoted teams from last season providing the opposition for the 4th week running, and are now level on points with Kings. This week’s opponents MK Powers even fielded Div 2 substitute Paul Tompkins alongside Jiten Pitamber and Colin Munford. Not that Spinners had things all their own way as Jit pulled off two great wins against Gary Jones and Neil Massa in the 8-2 scoreline. No doubt Alan Cherry (another hat-trick here) & co are looking forward to some tougher opponents in the weeks ahead.
A good week for my MK Topspin side, off the bottom at last with 4 hard won points gained against former champions MK Kingpins. Russell Penn continued his good form with a terrific brace that included a career best win over Craig Brown, although Craig was a million miles away from his own best. Russell also beat Pete Bannister, as did Mervyn Kelly, while I took advantage of Craig’s current lapse. There was no beating the ‘Mackem machine’ Dave Allison though, who won all his 3-straight.
This sunk MK Phoenix to the bottom of the pile after they were whitewashed by 3rd placed Greenleys Monarchs 10-0. There was some early resistance as Alan Bolding took Tomek Nowakowski to 5 games in the opening set and Mervyn Phillips did likewise in the next one against Ian Johnston. But that was as good as it got for Phoenix really as Monarchs dominated the proceedings. Martin Hall was the third hat-trick man for Monarchs and Terry Lau appeared for Phoenix.
Player of the week is Russell Penn.
DIVISION 1
PUMAS POUNCE ON VAN HIRE SLIP
Leaders at the beginning of the week, St. Christopher Van Hire, were dealt a blow by an understrength Woburn Sands Data side as both teams fielded weakened teams. James Molloy hit a hat-trick and Daren Ward a brace with the home boys coming out on top 7-3. The pair combined for the doubles and the final win came in the ‘battle of the reserves’ when Div 2’s Andy Jenkins beat Div 5’s John Taylor. Fabrice Spelta got a couple for Van Hire and Paul Haigh one.
This left the door open for either Greenleys Glory or MK Pumas, level on points just behind Van Hire, and playing each other this week. A classic was expected but a damp squid ensued as an understaffed Glory side collapsed to a 10-0 defeat to take them down to 5th and elevate their rivals to top spot. The Pumas trio of Andy Smith, Julie Snowdon and Chris Belton swept away the challenge of Ian Brown and Christine Scaysbrook with the pick of the sets being a 19-17 in the 5th win for Chris over Ian. Ian also took Julie to 5 games, as did Christine.
The Eagles were once renowned for fielding the same team of Barry Bishop, Geoff Callaway and Dave Plumb year after year, decade after decade even, throughout their travels around MK, based at various venues but always keeping the famous ‘Eagles’ suffix in their title and sometimes playing with just 2 (to my chagrin I must add) when one of them couldn’t make it. That consistency of ‘selection’ has slipped in recent times with the occasional ‘outsider’ making an appearance. However this week Eagles went the whole hog and picked a team without any of their legendary trio. Suddenly, it was all down to father and son Iain and Joe Lindsay, together with Div 3 reserve Andres Lopez,. to represent the team name and a splendid job they made of it too. Both Lindsays remained unbeaten and paired up for the doubles in Eagles 7-3 success, while the losses came from the bat of Andres, who went down to Sam Willett in 5 games, Andy Whitehead in 4 and Bub Burman in 3.
Big win at the foot of the table with promoted Open University Primes beating last year’s bottom side Newport Pagnell Vantage. Both teams were looking for their first win of the season and it went emphatically to Primes by 9-1 with no sets going beyond 4 games. Patrick Wong was in red hot form once again from last week (when he beat Biao Wang) and dropped only one game all night. Martin Lok joined him on a maximum with Charity Wong chipping in with 2 wins. Consolation win by Vantage came from Sue Lewis, leaving Mike Howard and Simon Read, playing up from Div 2, winless.
Player of the week is Patrick Wong.