Wildernesse Squash Club

With Chris Skiller injuring his foot in a football game and his replacement Tony Webb going AWOL, we had to make do with 4 players.

The match got off to an inauspicious start when Mark Johnson lost 0/3 at #3 to Kevin Ford (the first time Mark had lost to him apparently) and Bob Scott went 0/2 down and 5/7 down in the 3rd game to Tim Smith at #4. Fortunately for Wildernesse, Tim seemed to lose concentration and then tiredness took over as Bob finished the stronger of the two players, winning the 3rd game 9/7 and then taking the 4th and 5th to win 3/2.

Peter Conway blitzed Gary Jacobs 9/0 in the first game but let him back in with some careless play in the second and looked to be heading for a long struggle before putting his thinking cap on and realising that Gary wasn't likely to pick up too many drop shots. From 6/6 in the 3rd, Peter ran out a fairly comfortable winner 3/1.

Rich Oatey and Keith Ewin seemed to be fairly evenly matched, with Rich's athleticism being matched by Keith's range of shots. After trading blows for 4 games, the match was poised at 2/2 and it was a disappointing way for the match to end when Keith fell heavily at 3/3 in the 5th and had to retire, giving Rich victory 3/2.

So the 4-man squad came through again - another close match that has gone our way and we have now won our last 5 matches in a row and 7 out of our last 9. If we could get 5 fit players out each week we would be deadly.

We arrived at Old Elthamians confident of victory in our cup (plate) match. After all, we had a stronger team than the one that had won 4-1 in the league 2 weeks previously. However, Old Elthamians put up a good fight (almost literally in one match) and Wildernesse came through by the narrowest of margins.

Bob Scott came up against "occasional" Old Elthamian, Kirk Page, who reeled off a stream of winners as he raced to an early lead. Although Bob could have nicked the first game, going down 8-10; and possibly the third (which Kirk won 9-7), in the end 3-0 was a fair reflection of Kirk's domination.

Meanwhile, Harvey Branton also lost, 1-3, to Justin Perkins to give Old Eltham a 2-0 lead.

When Peter Conway lost the first two games against Beaux Bagels' Mehmet Yusuf; and Chris Skiller had gone down 9-10 in the first round of his on-court rumble against Alex Pilz, it looked all over bar the shouting.
However, Peter fought his way back to a 3-2 win and Chris managed to stay out of his opponent's way long enough to win the final 3 games (and, incidentally, provide entertainment for the Priory main committee who decided to pay a surprise visit on the night). This meant that it was 2-2 and all down to the final match.

Rich Oatey and Keith slugged it out in the first game, with a number of punishing rallies, punctuated by spectacular shots from Rich (winners and losers) and deft drop shots from Keith. Rich flung himself round the court in his eagerness to get to some shots, on one occasion finishing up flat on his face and on another falling over but getting up to hit a winning shot. Rich won that game 10-9 but lost the second after a string of errors. However, Rich gradually asserted himself and came through 3-1 to clinch the tie for Wildernesse.