PREMIER/DIV 1 ROUND-UP WEEK 13
Published 13/12/2019 at 17:36:03 by David Wackrill; edited 1 times, last on 13/12/2019 at 17:36:53 by David Wackrill.
PREMIERDYLAN ON SONG FOR BELEAGERED SPINNERS
What a difference a week makes as teams faced off against the same opponents for the second time in a fortnight. Last week Greenleys Monarchs came within a whisker of overtaking stable-mates Kings in the title race. This week, with the same side in action against an arguably weaker Kings crucially missing their sick-bedded talisman skipper, they went down spectacularly by 9-1. Last week’s hero, Ian Johnston, was this week’s zero with Tomek Nowakowski joining him on a blank, leaving Martin Hall to pick up Monarch’s sole win after a tight encounter with Guy Sparrow. Matt Haynes and Gary Deakin took maximums for the conquering Kings, now virtually assured of their first title, and well deserved it will be too.
Mark Purcell spared MK Kingpins' blushes when narrowly avoiding what would have been only his team’s 3rd blackwash in 30 years. Mark was close to losing to Ollie Horswell in 4 games, but ended up the winner in a 5 game thriller to take the 2-man Kingpins side’s only win on the night in another 9-1 scoreline. Warriors skipper Ricky Taiwo lived up to his ‘Tricky’ nickname in blunting the usually proficient Dave Allison attack for his first ever win over the big hitting Kingpin. Valentin Cazuca was relatively untroubled for his maximum.
MK Spinners included a brace of Division 2 men in their line-up and still came away with a draw against MK Phoenix. In times past a Premier win by a player this far down the local League pyramid was unheard of, but nowadays it’s become pretty much an annual occurrence (Danny Sedgwick last year, Dan Englander the year before and so on). Spinners’ hero here was Dylan Cox, playing his 3rd Premier match of the season, with a straight sets success over Mervyn Phillips to supplement a regulation maximum from skipper Alan Cherry and a doubles win for the Alan/Dylan duo. Paul Tompkins also appeared for Spinners while Alan Bolding and Ioan Constantin completed the Phoenix, who now sink to rock bottom, line-up.
My MK Topspin team picked up only their second win of the season against fellow strugglers MK Powers whose star man Minesh Pitamber was in awesome form with a maximum. This didn’t leave much room for error but we managed to secure 6 of the remaining 7 sets with just a win for Clare Styles over Russell Penn going against us. Mervyn Kelly and myself picked up 2 each and partnered each other for the doubles. Russell came good against Pete Tillotson for our remaining victory. Only 4 points separate the bottom 3 teams now with the competition for last place likely to remain close.
Player of the week is Dylan Cox.
DIVISION 1
THE SAINTS COME MARCHING IN
It was a case of one way traffic at the Foster Institute on Tuesday as visitors Newport Pagnell Vantage, after leaving their main man behind, brought along Div 3 veteran Jim Brogan from Division 3 as his replacement. Skipper Mike Howard saved the whitewash with a fine win over Paul Haigh in the only set to go the distance. But that was the extent of the bottom club’s success against the new League leaders following another shock defeat for MK Pumas. David Broome and Fabrice Spelta hit maximums for Data and Sue Lewis was the other Vantage player.
Even the much needed return of Julie Snowdon to the Pumas line-up couldn’t hold back the tidal wave of defeats that threaten to engulf MK Pumas title prospects, as they sank to their 3rd defeat in a row against Woburn Sands Data, which now leaves them in 3rd place in the table. Julie beat Darren Ward and Rob McPheat as well as partnering Chris Belton to a doubles win before facing James Molloy in the final set of the evening with her team trailing 5-4. Alas for Julie, it was a set too far as James won over 4 games to complete his own hat-trick. Chris won the other Pumas point with a win over Rob while Keith Carrington is still looking for his first win over a Division 1 player this season.
Eagles won the Greenleys derby (at the 3rd attempt after 2 drawn matches) over Glory by an 8-2 margin and now move into 2nd place. Joe Lindsay and Geoff Callaway took maximums and won the doubles between them with Dave Plumb completed the scoring. Christine Scaysbrook and Jacob Midson both beat Dave with Div 3 debutant Dwight Edwards completing the Glory line-up. Christine writes that in her opening set with Geoff, they had at least 8 nets, lets and edges each per game!
Open University Primes completed the ‘double’ over Chackmore Hasbeens to narrow the gap between the sides to 3 points in the battle for 6th place. Bub Burman was back on form for Hasbeens but his only support came from a Sam Willett win over James Zeng. After praising the excellent doubles record of Bub and Andy Whitehead last week (9 wins so far), they duly lost tamely this time round to James and Patrick Wong! Charity Wong chipped in with a valuable brace for Primes.
Player of the week is James Molloy.
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