The Comberton team went off to Eton on Thursday this week for their second round knockout fixture. The team was Nils Downes, Rory Symmons, Euan Macnamee, Andy Hall, Tom Symmons; with Peter Tasker and James Davenport as reserves. Both Peter and James came along to support the team and also played friendlies against the Eton reserves.
The Eton team proved too strong in the main event for the Comberton players. Only Euan and Andy were able to take a game off their opponents and the others lost 3:0. However there were some very hard-fought games and we were a bit unlucky not to have a few more games to our credit. Nils was looking well matched against his opponent and Rory very nearly took his second game. Tom was particularly unlucky not to get more points off his opponent since he won quite a number of tough rallies from hand-out only to lose the next rally without gaining the point for his hard work against an opponent who was nearly twice his size.
In fact all of the Eton team were considerably older than our lads. As team manager Ray Scrivens said: 'It's been a remarkable run for a team aged between 12 and 16 years to reach the last sixteen in England in an Under-19 competition, and losing to an Eton team comprising four 18-year-olds and a 17-year-old is certainly no disgrace!'
The scores in games were:
Nils 2;9 3;9 3;9
Rory 5;9 7;9 5;9
Euan 7;9 3;9 9;5 4;9
Andy 10;9 1;9 3;9 0;9
Tom 0;9 0;9 2;9
Every point was hard fought for - so well done the Gods!
