PREMIER / DIV 1 ROUND-UP WEEK 16
SHOCK DEFEAT ENDS TITLE RACE ?
A first home defeat for Leighton Buzzard Generations at their previously impregnable Wing headquarters on Friday leaves the door wide open for current champions Milton Keynes Titans to retain the title following Titans straightforward 10-0 result against struggling clubmates Topspin 3 days earlier. With the manpower at their disposal, Generations were Titans only realistic challengers and had been in magnificent home form until now, including a whitewash over the champions.
The Generations went down 6-4 though this week to mid-table Greenleys Glory following a superb performance from the visitors with Ian Mead and Iain Lindsay, snaffling all the points between them. Although it was the usual hat-trick from on-fire Ian M, a superb brace by Iain L., plus the doubles set between them secured the win. Scott Dixon was the other Glory boy on duty, losing out to Alex Du Noyer, Ben Rolfe and Antonina Bohach, who also beat Iain.
Meanwhile the Titans enjoyed an easy win despite Div 1 sub Michael Wilkins standing in for Craig Brown in what was Titans first team change of the season, leaving Nick Howard and Ricky Taiwo as the only players to be ever-present in the Premier. Now with a 15 point lead over all opposition and a game still in hand, closure on the title can't be far away, and well deserved too. Russell Penn, Mal Hussain and Mervyn Kelly played for Topspin here.
An impressive 5 match winning run for MK Spinners came to an end this week against long-term opponents Greenleys Monarchs. this despite the customary hat-trick from skipper Alan Cherry. The only other win came from Gary Jones with Jecu Aurelian making up the team. A strong all-round performance brought home the victory for Monarchs with two each from Tomek Nowakowski and Josh Verma, and one from Martin Hall plus the doubles.
Greenleys Warriors and Open University Primes managed to face each other twice in 8 days as Warriors continue to play-off their back catalogue of fixtures. Following a 9-1 win first time round (Ameya Phatak 3, Andras Bayer 3, Ricky Jackson 2, plus doubles) the plucky Primes turned the tables with a 6-4 win themselves when Warriors fielded a completely different team (Adrian Piotrowski 3, Richard Bailey 0, Anand Keshav 0, doubles) in the return match. Ricky, Richard and Anand were all Div 2 subs from Greenleys Princes for the beleaguered Warriors. The Primes stuck to their squad players throughout with James Zeng and Ning He featuring in both matches and Patrick Wong replacing Andy Tan for the second clash. The latter match has given a tremendous boost to Primes points total and they could well lift themselves off the bottom of the table when they play MK Topspin in the next round of fixtures.
Player of the week : Iain Lindsay