The local derby against Edgbaston produces the first surprise of the season with a 17 to 7 win for the home side.
The first home game of the new season produced some electrifying squash and some unexpected results. On paper Wolverhampton went into the match with a likely 3-2 defeat but what does paper know about anything. A crowd of over 100 supporters saw some 3 1/2 hours of brilliant squash, limited controversy and one exceptional result. Individual scores first.
Anthony Ricketts 3 0 David Palmer
9-6,15-13,9-4.
Scott Handley 3 2 Adrian Grant
5-9,9-7,9-7,2-9,9-5.
Mark Cairns 0 3 Peter Barker
7-9,6-9,3-9.
Liam Kenny 3 2 Hadrian Stiff
9-3,10-8,7-9,10-12,9-5.
Shelley Kitchen 3 0 Rachel Wilmott
9-0,9-0,9-2.
Rachel was playing her first ever National League match coming in at the last moment for the injured Isabelle Stoehr. Although only 16 she made Shelley move all over the court to cover some good lengths and cross court shots but was overpowered by Shelley's weight of shot, coupled with an understandable desire to try for winners which generally just did not come off. Her first point in the 3rd game raised a great cheer from the crowd. We shall certainly see more of her in the years to come but this was to steep a hill to climb on her first outing in the league.
One up to Wolverhampton.
On the show court Mark Cairns, freshly back from honeymoon in California, had his hands full with Peter Barker. The first game could have gone either way but Peter closed it out.After that Mark found it difficult to get Peter to the back of the court and found himself retrieving from deep into the corners. The match lasted 49 minutes which pays tribute to the battling quality that Mark always shows but from early into the second game it was clear that this was not going to be a win for us.
As Shelley's game was over quite quickly the 4th string men's match started while Mark and Peter were only part way through thiers. Liam got off to a brilliant start, taking the ball early, using his speed to harry his opponent into mistakes and playing some beautiful deception shots that had Hadrian all over the place. This pattern continued until halfway through the second game at which point Hadrian suddenly woke up and matched Liam point for point. Some uncharacteristic mistakes by Liam brought the scores level at 8 all and a match that was going nicely our way suddenly looked in danger. Hadrian however was asking for and expecting a fair number of lets many of which he was not getting and this seemed to distract him sufficiently to lose the next two points.
Again the third game seemed to be Liam's but some further mistakes coupled with very tenacious play from Hadrian brought the score to 2-1. The next game seemed at last to be going Liam's way and he reached 3 match balls fairly quickly with his opponent beginning to look a bit tired. Then Hadrian found some more energy, again forced errors, particularly at the front of the court and pulled the game around. The fifth did go more according to plan with Liam's deceptive shots again regularly scoring points. Five minutes later and we had our second win after 70 minutes of very competitive play.
The upset of the night has to be the next match. Scott Handley is ranked 70 in the world with Adrian Grant at 13. No contest!
Not true. Scott is fit, plays some excellent lengths and can kill the ball given the opportunity. Essentially he played a waiting game, making Adrian rally and accepting that once or twice Adrian would find the shot to finish the rally. More often than not, he forced Adrian to try such shots too soon and errors began flowing off the left handers racket. At 2-1 up, with Adrian getting extremely annoyed with himself it looked as if a great result was just around the corner. It was at this point that Scott forgot his game plan, went for winners too early and promptly lost 9-2. So 2-2. Back to plan A, and it worked. After only a few minutes and some errors from his opponent Scott was 8-3 up. Then he forgot his plan, went for a winner too early and tinned it. An outrageous front wall nick from Adrian made it 8-5 to Scott and I was beginning to get nervous again.
A club member who I was sitting next to assured me that she had had training on how to deal with heart attacks (but I found out afterwards some 10 years ago!) and would look after me should I colapse under the strain. It wasn't neccessary as part way through the next rally Scott hit the front wall nick about half way up and what was going to be straight drive turned into a cross court missile. Adrian had read it correctly and was motoring towards the forehand wall as the ball whistled past him in a completely different dirction. Match won and the overall score 3-1 to us.
It is pretty rare for Wolverhampton to go into the last match in a winning position so this was something to savour. Although Anthony's current world ranking is some 10 places below David Palmer, if you discount the effect on his ranking of a 6 month layoff due to injury the two men would be quite close. Anthony came out with all guns firing and took the first game 9-6, but only after David sportingly awarded Anthony a point at game ball when the ball hit his racket en route to the front wall which the referee did not see.
David seemed to have a slight calf problem but this did not prevent him from making some spectactular retieves in the second game, a feature indeed of both men's game. How they get to some of these balls escapes me, as what seem guarranteed winners are returned with interest. A strange game with both men having game point and then making unforced errors to hand the opportunity back to the other.
Finally Anthony closed it out and the third sort of fizzled out with David unhappy about a no let, so much so that he demonstrated in a similar situation during the next point that he could have got to the ball only to make a return that Anthony put away with ease. A superb forehand drive deep to the back finished the rubber and gave us the 4-1 win.
A good start to the season and a great local derby. When we meet Edgbaston again in the second half I'm sure that they will be out for revenge but in the meantime we shall look to keep our momentum going for our next match at Duffield on the 26th October.
Last season I had only one known reader, Brian Turvey who always made some comment on my journalistic efforts. This season I have gained two more so hello to Richard and Andrew Birks as well as Brian. Hopefully there are some more but three aint bad!
