UniSport Guildford's promising progress came to an abrupt halt against old rivals Chichester, reports Ian Robinson ...
Chichester 5 beat UniSport Guildford 0
Peter Genever 3 beat Stacey Ross 2
9 - 6, 9 - 5, 5 - 9, 6 - 9, 9 - 6
M. Azlan Iskandar (Malaysia) 1 beat Tony Hands 0 retired
9 - 3, 4 - 1 retired
Tim Vail 3 beat Neil Frankland 1
9 - 4, 12 - 10, 9 - 11, 9 - 4
Chris Tomlinson 3 beat Chris Hall 0
9 - 3, 9 - 6, 9 - 3
Linda Charman 3 beat Sarah Kippax 0
9 - 1, 9 - 0, 9 - 0
The UniSport Guildford progress in the National Squash League came to an abrupt halt against old rivals Chichester. At a club where matches are always difficult it was made even worse by an injury to former world number 10 Tony Hands and the first appearance of the season of youngsters Sarah Kippax and Chris Hall. Chichester are wily campaigners who never suffer unduly with absenteeism and were altogether too good for the university team. With the exception of an outstanding match between the two number ones, in what was effectively a dead rubber, the match was one sided.
The youngsters took the brunt of the assault by the home team. Chichester's world number 3, Linda Charman was the consummate professional in dealing with any mischief that Sarah Kippax might have thrown at her. Charman was never unduly troubled and gave Kippax a lesson she would probably rather forget. A miserly one point was all that the much travelled youngster could squeeze out of her opponent.
The misery of the visiting Guildford team was compounded moments later as 16 year old Chris Hall was sent on his way by the older and more experienced Chris Tomlinson. Tipped as one of the more promising young players in the county, Hall had to come to terms with the extra pace and skills at the senior age group and although there were one or two promising signs there was precious little else to be happy about. Hall stuck to his task as best he could and did manage to gain some measure of respectability in landing 12 points in total but that was as much to do with the wastefulness of his opponent as his own winners. In time to come Hall will be more patient and less error prone as he attunes to the pace of this level of squash.
This was a dreadful start for UniSport Guildford a 2 - 0 deficit with the match barely half an hour old. Tony Hands ventured on to the show court with his Malaysian opponent, Mohamed Azlan, who had recently arrived back from international duty at the world team championships in Vienna. This was certainly going to be a big ask for the Guildford man, but after the bright start to his campaign in the first match against Bicester, it was not going to be a foregone conclusion either. The first game was merely a sighter and Azlan looking very sharp took the loose balls that were on offer and promptly dispatched them for immediate winners. A hasty 9 - 3 game against was not what was required. At the start of the second as the rallies began to even out, the university man pulled up sharply clutching his thigh and that was the end of his evening. So things had gone from bad to worse and in the space of 40 minutes the match was lost by a depressing 3 - 0 margin with two matches still to play.
Neil Frankland had much to prove, having also returned from the world team championships but having enjoyed much less of the action due to some strange Scottish selection policy. Neil was immediately on the back foot as the 'iron man' of National League squash Tim Vail hit top form straight from the start and was happily slapping winners into the nick at will. This gave Chichester the lead, but this was to belie the struggle that was to follow. Frankland fought back hitting the ball crisply and tight thus controlling the court. Game balls came and went, but after some harsh rallies Vail somehow managed to steal the game and with it a big advantage. In the third Frankland piled on the pressure and the struggle continued but this time the advantage was converted raising the hopes of a Guildford comeback. However, the form player of last season's league, Vail was back to his best and was again finding the winners of the first game at will to take the game and match. 4 - 0 deficit and the night was ever more depressing for Guildford. To this point the whole match had taken 45 minutes to complete, but the final match was a classic even though to most people it was clearly a dead rubber except for the two players on court and the managers desperately calculating the value of extra points for the final analysis.
The home favourite Peter Genever ranked 58 in the world was matched against the vastly improved Stacey Ross ranked 93. Genever was first to hit form and raced to a 6 - 1 lead which was in part gifted by some loose play by the university man. The tide was stemmed and Ross levelled the score only to find that he was muscled out of the game with some unusually extravagant winners by Genever. The pattern was similar in the second game as Ross was beginning to find his timing and started to become a greater presence on the court and gain more control of the central area. By the same token Genever who was having one of those nights where when he needed winners he did not seem to strive very hard to find them. A 2 - 0 lead to Chichester looked insurmountable, but Ross had other ideas. The pace was unrelenting and Ross was now controlling much more of the rallies moving his agile opponent around the court more fluently keeping the pressure on and forcing one or two errors from the Chichester racket. There were just enough errors to snatch a lead and hang on to it this time.
This was developing into a fascinating struggle and both players were showing some considerable skills with winners and balls clinging to the wall and the most unrelenting retrieving. The fourth game was to follow the same pattern as the third. The UniSport man forged a hard earned lead and just managed to cling on to it with some much needed winners at crucial times and the occasional error from Genever. At 2 - 2 it was anybody's match and still the pace was unrelenting and there was very little loss of accuracy and control to this point either. In the fifth the score crept edgily up towards the end of the game and at 6 - 5 in favour of Ross, there were to be 3 fatal errors which were to gift the game to Genever taking the score to match ball without the sort of struggle in the rallies that had characterised the match to that point. Genever capped a fine performance from him with a classic backhand dropshot to the sidewall dead nick and sent his home supporters home happy with their 5 - 0 points haul for the night. Ross was left to ponder what would have been a fine win against an inform opponent. This was an excellent contest and made a great evenings entertainment on its own as the 1 hour and 15 minutes duration will testify.
UniSport Guildford travelled home sombrely reflecting on the match to come at home next Tuesday 4th November against Lee on Solent. The injury to Tony Hands will have to be accounted for as he is selected in the team but the absence of Stacey Ross on international duty in Canada is a bitter blow as he is the in form player in the team at the moment and will be badly missed. The positive is that Stephen Meads is back from international duty. As it stand it will be a big night of squash entertainment and tickets are likely to be in short supply, so don't forget to book early.
