Oakbrook 8 – 1 Abbeydale D

Gavin B & Simon T | Tipue M A & Glen T | Aaron G & Aamir K

Our last match of 2013 was also our easiest – at home against Abbeydale ‘D’ team, consisting mainly of some of their super teenagers.  And for the first time this season, we had our full team in action – despite Gavin’s grumbles that all three of our feathers team matches this season have fallen on the same evening as a televised England international football match.  Fortunately he chose to win at badminton rather than watch others losing to Germany at football.

In a few years, Abbeydale’s teens’ will all undoubtedly be playing at a far higher standard than any of our team ever have, but for the time being, their perfect footwork, deft racquet skills and textbook training can still be beaten by our height, strength, consistency and experience.

With Aaron unable to make it for the normal start time, Abbeydale’s team kindly agreed to play out of order, so although their pairs played in roughly the usual sequence, ours were a bit mixed up.  Aamir patiently sat watching for the first four games, as Gavin and Simon, and Tipue and Glen, both started with two straightforward victories.  Although the kids showed flashes of talent, they were unable to control it into a consistent run of winning shots.  By keeping them moving and forcing them to play shots from the back of the court that require more strength, the Oakbrook pairs took us to a 4-0 lead by the time Aaron arrived.

Our double-AA pair then took to the court, but perhaps without sufficient warming up!  For they first faced the Abbeydale first pair who had already played one game and were ready for the challenge.  With Aaron not having played feathers since last season, Aamir still fairly new to the feathers team, and neither having played together before, they struggled to keep consistency and take the game to the opposition.  Aaron’s consistency wasn’t at its usual level despite some great shots from close to the net, and Aamir found himself too often having to play a defensive lift instead of an attacking shot.  A combination of these meant that Abbeydale’s pair were let off a few times, and were given too much time to pick clever overhead shots from three-quarter court, which led to our only loss of the evening, 15-21, 17-21.

The Oakbrook pair were back on court immediately, and again they struggled to find form at the start and lost the first game, but then things started to improve as they warmed up more and got back in the swing of feathers matches.  They pushed through to win that game 16-21, 21-13, 21-19, and then soon after played their third game which they won 21-19, 21-18.  Hopefully they will be able to carry that improvement forward to our next match, although that’s a couple of months away!

To round the evening off, the other two Oakbrook pairs played their final games with similarly comfortable victories as before.  Gavin and Simon won every game to between 10 and 13, and finished with a total of 126-73; Tipue and Glen had a bit more variation with games won to figures as far apart as 4 and 18, and ended up very similar with 126-70 overall.

Thanks to the team for playing, and for doubling our points tally in the league.

Oakbrook 2 – 7 Rawmarsh

Gavin B & Simon T | Tipue M A & Glen T | Aamir K & Dave R

One tends to get the feeling when one of the opposition is wearing an England shirt that things are going to be tricky.  And sure enough, Rawmarsh’s first pair made short work of Gavin and Simon at the start of the match: 27-42 in two games.  Tipue and Glen, keen to improve upon their first pair’s lead, went for the sort of improvement usually reserved for pole-vault world records, and went just one point better, 28-42 in two games.  With Aaron away in the north sea, Dave R was kind enough to step in for us, and as usual put in a performance better than he will admit.  Though with he and Aamir both relatively unfamiliar with feather shuttles and not having played together before, against a strong Rawmarsh team, the realistic target was always going to be to aim for 21 points in total across both games, and see if they could sneak a game on the way.  They started well, putting the two regular pairs to shame by not only making their 21 target, but exceeding both other pairs: 33-42 their combined score from the first game.

This spurred Tipue and Glen to greater things.  Which was pretty impressive given by this time Glen’s “my ankle’s a bit sore” had turned into Glen’s “you know what, I wonder if it’s broken”.  Their was visible surprise on the faces of the opposition’s strong first pair, as the Oakbrook couple played some excellent drives and drop-shots to take the first game to 20-20.  Sadly for us, their opposition rode the pressure well and took a narrow 22-24 victory before going on to win the second end, but we had them worried for a while!  Aamir and Dave were then again successful in getting their 21 target, although I have to admit I was mostly off eating biscuits at the time, so didn’t actually see how well they played to get their 22-42.  But I shall assume it was with Dave’s characteristic strong movement and smashing, and Aamir’s deceptive drop shots and dinky net shots.

Rawmarsh are one of three new teams to our third division this year, and we feared that they might all be a cut above the usual division three standard.  So we weren’t hugely surprised by being 0-5 down by nine o’clock.  The onlooking club members had long since stopped cheering for victory – well, I say ‘cheering’, what I mean is ‘looking-occasionally-in-the-direction-of-the-match-courts-with-vague-enthusiasm’ – and were instead wondering whether their team could avoid the whitewash.  The team were wondering the same thing.

Oakbrook’s first pair were on next, against the opposition third pair, so surely if any game was to be won, this was it.  Knowing this, Gavin and Simon went for it, missed it, and crashed to a 12-21 first game defeat.  Gavin made the rather lame suggestion to Simon that they were warmed up now, so they’d do better – and oddly enough it seemed to hold true, for they competed far better in the second game, taking it 25-23, and then going on to win the decider 21-15 after some very close line calls which even the watching opposition had to admit really were all just a centimetre out each time in our favour.

The opposite game, Rawmarsh first pair against Oakbrook third pair, saw Aamir and Dave fall just short of their previous scores, as Rawmarsh’s first pair made sure there wouldn’t be any more 20-all moments by making sure that they didn’t concede 20 points in total.  Gavin and Simon were then back on to try to repeat their winning performance from their previous game, but took ‘repeat’ a bit literally – again crashing to a 14-21 first game thwacking, again hoping they were warmed up better now, and again suddenly improving, this time with a 21-8, 21-18 finish to another tight game.

To round off the evening, Tipue and Glen had the final game.  With Glen by this point ‘tacking’ like a sailboat heading upwind when trying to get around the court with his dodgy ankle, it was impressive that they were able to make a very close game of it.  Solid, consistent rallies forced their opposition into mistakes, but not quite enough in the end, coming out 9-21, 21-19, 16-21 against.  A shame, since with a fully functional pair of lower limbs, Glen would surely have been able to give Tipue stronger assistance in coming out on top.

So overall a few close games, two of which we won, and a few not-so-close games, all of which we lost, but all of which we competed in.  Good experience for us all to play against a team whose deception and shot variety are better than we are used to, in rallies that are significantly more fast-paced.  Many thanks to Dave for subbing in for us, and to Gavin who did a lot of putting-things-away-at-the-end which was very useful as it freed me up to fend off and/or sympathise with the statutory comments of disappointment from opposition players about the colour of the lines.

If the other two new teams to the division are as good as this, it’s going to be our toughest season for a while.

Phoenix 4 – 5 Oakbrook

Gavin B & Simon T | Tipue M A & Glen T | Aamir K & Naz M

Half a team of new faces in the Oakbrook line-up, as we started the season with a match against Phoenix, who have been our closest rivals for some years. Inconsiderately, they’d got themselves promoted to division 2 last year after what I believe was a couple of good wins and a couple of odd league table results and void matches. Happily (for us, if not for them), they’re firmly back in division 3 again this season so we can renew our acquantance.

So we arrived at their place, ignoring the potholed floor and cold-enough-to-turn-your-sweat-to-steam temperature, and focussed instead on the facts that they provide cups of tea, you can see the lines a lot more easily than at ours, and at least it wasn’t the depths of winter yet.

Gavin and Simon started quickly, and whizzed to a 21-17, 13-3 lead before the momentum changed and they found themselves at 21-17, 21-23, 20-20… but they hung on to deny their opponents an impressive comeback victory, taking the final game 22-20. With the number of frame shots, hit-the-net-and-go-over shots, and even one where the feather came off the shuttle to produce an unplayable slowed-down-mid-way smash, Simon was happy to assign the victory to luck more than talent. With fewer frame and net shots, but still with luck firmly on their side, they went on to win both their other games, making similarly hard work of one of them.

Aamir and Naz were finding themselves very much thrown in at the deep end. With neither having played with feathers before, and Naz recently promoted up three teams in one go, they were always fighting against the odds. They did win some respectable rallies but found it hard to string together enough to compete for victory, and ended up 55-126 down overall in their six games. Doubtless this year will be a tough one, but hopefully they will find success in later games.

So the match result relied on our final pair. Glen had kindly driven right across Sheffield and beyond to make it to the match, and then had to nurse a sore ankle as well, but put in a fine performance covering for Aaron G. We’re happy to have borrowed him from Drone this season! He was partnered by Tipue who has been involved in salvaging us a victory against the odds so many times before, that we were confident they’d be ready for the challenge. They looked reasonably comfortable against Phoenix’s third pair, but didn’t quite have enough against their first pair, winning the first and losing the second in straight sets. So it all came down to the final game of the night: 4-4, one to play. We needn’t have worried – either pressure doesn’t affect them, or they hadn’t got a clue what the score was – and they took it with one of Oakbrook’s best scores of the night: 21-15, 21-15.

Thanks to Glen for standing in for us, and to Aamir and Naz for braving their first experience of the feathers league. And of course to the long-standing team core for guiding us to victory. It’s almost always 5-4 or 4-5 against Phoenix, so it was pleasing that this time we got the 5 and they got the 4.