07/12/2003
INSIDE THE NATIONAL LEAGUE
Brian Hargrave presents a review of the season at the half-way stage ...

In Group A it is looking very much a two horse race for the play-off places with Manchester-Pontefract setting a hot pace with the only 100% record closely followed by last season’s champions Edgbaston Priory who have opened up a 9 point gap above the third placed team. Benz-Bavarian Duffield heads a tight cluster of 4 teams separated by just 3 points. It will almost certainly need one of these teams to put together an unbeaten run of all 5 games in the second half of the season to squeeze into the play offs.

Such a feat was achieved by Northumberland in 1999-2000 season recovering from losing 4 of the first 5 ties to reach the play offs. FPD Savills Nottingham are probably best equipped to do so provided that they can field John White and their strongest team.

Yawar Abbas, the popular manager of Manchester-Pontefract attributes his team’s success to management master-stroke in signing 5 quality lady players to provide cover and having a squad with real quality in depth.

Any team that can field Marcus Berrett at No 4 string behind Lee Beachill, Nick Taylor and James Willstrop must have an embarrassment of riches to make them strong favourites for the NL title. Berrett who no longer plays the PSA circuit but who still plays to a top world 25 standard has a great NL and SL record against some of the world’s top players over the past 3 seasons and with James Willstrop improving with every game he plays on the world stage the Manchester- Pontefract combination will take some stopping.

Another Manchester-Pontefract tactic witnessed in round 5 was the World Cup rugby style pre match bonding sessions. At least I think that was what was happening and this strategy will no doubt spread all the way to Chichester.

Newcomers Manchester Northern has found life hard on their return to the NL fold but the players lifted the spirits of their manager Masambo Selisho after whitewashing a depleted Nottingham outfit in round 5. Masambo tells me that his curly, fancy hair has fallen out since becoming a NL manager but the good news is that it is growing back, unlike some.

In Group B, it looks very much a 3 horse race for the two play off spots. In the final tie of the first half TVS Broxbourne’s lead was cut to just two points by Chichester thanks to Tim Vail and the rest of the lower order players.

Chichester bounced back from a surprise 4-1 round 4 defeat against Lee on Solent who pose the biggest threat to the top two teams. The first half clash between these two teams was a fiercely contested affair with the game between Lee Drew and Tim Vale not pretty to watch with the added distraction caused by supporters rustling pages of their dictionary to find the definition of “callipygian”.

The tickets for the return tie on 17 February are already selling fast in anticipation that this will be a play off decider. Lee on Solent will be relying on Bradley Ball, Vicky Botwright and Lee Drew to keep producing the goods.

Ian Robinson’s Unis Guilford often save their best form until the second half but Ian’s mainly home grown talent is gaining invaluable experience. How nice it would be to see Paul Johnson back playing in the second half.

The other newcomers SWSA Bicester has found NL life very tough but Sue Rose and Scott Handley are not downhearted and their promising young academy players are also gaining invaluable experience at the top level.

One of the main talking points amongst managers, supporters, sponsors and Club Chairmen is that NL dates have clashed with PSA and WISPA events depriving sponsors and supporters of seeing some of the world’s top players. Over the years the success of the National League has been due to the uncertainty of the availability of top players which provides an opportunity for Clubs to introduce younger squad members and the occasional good standard local player. This balancing act has often resulted in 6 or 7 seven teams being in contention for the play offs right down to the final group round. The matter is on the agenda for the next NL Manager’s meeting and hopefully, a solution will be found in time for next season.

Round 5 was noticeable for an absence of any refereeing controversy although Nottingham based Wendy Danzey did her best out in Qatar when she ruled that an injury sustained by Jonathan Power when playing against Nick Matthew was a “contributory accidental injury" and agreed that the match could be rescheduled alongside further first round matches due to be played the following day. I kept checking for the result to establish whether Nick would be playing in the NL for Duffield and must have added considerably to the 3000 extra website hits received by the Squashplayer website around the dates for each NL tie.

I have it on good authority that Mr Crabtree at Chichester, who has his own fan club, is thinking about bringing out a book containing all his NL reports. This could become a best seller at Christmas. One suggested title of the book is “Callipygian”!

At the time of going to press there were no reports of transfers or new signings which are allowed during the short Christmas and New Year break.

My own earlier indirect approaches to sign Peter Nicol fell on stony ground but Christmas is a time for goodwill to be shown to all men. If ever Peter needs a little bit of extra taxable pocket money he does have my number!

 Contributor: Brian Hargrave