Comberton third team match report 19th October 2006

Away at Haverhill vs Haverhill II
Team line up: Andy, Euan, Mike, Steve, Martyn.

So it was off to the very borders of the shire, guided by Steve's TomTom GPS. Things went well until it pointed us up a dark alley to a forbidding industrial estate frequented only by those selling hard drugs or walking their dog. Fortunately Haverhill Leisure centre was just the other side of the fence. Unfortunately, it was the sort of fence who'd love to get his hands on stolen TomTom GPS gear.

First up was Andy - playing one of the craftiest old boys in the leagues. His lob service delivered with a delicate skip soaring up into the high Haverhill ceiling space before dropping almost vertically into the back corner. Every possible (and some that looked impossible) dropping opportunity was exploited with Andy retrieving at full speed. He took the second game but then lost the third. The pace was counting against his opponent and tired errors started to creep in, but Andy was not able to exploit this - losing finally 1:3.

Euan had a good start in classic manner running his opponent around the court and quickly reaching game ball in the first game. However the older man just would not give up and pulled back half-a-dozen points. Claiming that he was slow after being up all night, he carried on chasing Euan's accurate attacking shots and nicely lifted lobs.

Was this the turning point? - Euan must have been hit hard by the knowledge that his opponent had stolen his own training methods. He lost the next two games and in the fifth faced an opponent running on pure adrenalin - and running and running... Euan was not able to finish him off and ended up losing 2:3.

There were mixed fortunes for the veterans at the top of the team. Martyn had an easy 3:0 win with a second game gifted to him. There were no gifts for Mike from his opponent - who quickly took it 3:0. And finally Steve fought hard to 2 games apiece but was unable to keep running in the fifth. Leaving us at the end of the night with a fair number of games but losing the 5 point for an overall win.