Mens Feathers 3 – 5 Mosborough B

Tipue M A & Gavin B | Simon O & Simon T | David W & John W

Today’s excuse: We’re all still full of Christmas, and running around is a lot of hard work.

A full team for the first time in… erm… about two years!

And, early on, we wondered if perhaps this might be leading to a rare victory.

The first two games on court gave us cause for optimism.  Tipue and Gavin decided that 21-18 was too comfortable a win in their first end, and waited until 26-24 to win the second, with Gavin stating his inspiration to win was that there was no way he was going to be made to summon the energy for a third game.  Meanwhile, Simon and Simon completed three games in the same amount of time, losing a lead in the third game only to regain it right at the end to win 17-21, 21-15, 21-18 after an amazing array of smash-defence-winners from Simon O.  At 2-0 up in the match, a club member asked Simon T if we might be in for a win.  With his customary captainly confidence, he predicted a heroic 4-5 loss.

Perhaps the rest of the team heard him and tried to fulfil the prophecy, for it was from then on that things started going a bit awry.  Or perhaps the opposition, who had only one player over the age of 18, had brought a little more new-year fitness than us and didn’t peak so early in the evening.  David and John continued their season’s run of playing great rallies but narrowly losing close games, including a three-game effort against the opposition second pair which ended 21-17, 12-21, 13-21.

Tipue and Gavin came close to a second win, but this time the very-long-and-very-close game went the wrong way, and they lost out 21-15, 19-21, 22-24 in the longest game of the evening.  Simon and Simon were also keen to get their money’s worth out of the evening.  They followed their first game win with another three-set win 21-17, 22-24, 21-19, and had just taken their final game to a 23-25, 21-17 draw when ten o’clock came and it had to be abandoned.  Simon O was disappointed as he felt we had the momentum to take the third end; Simon T was disappointed as he agreed, and knew that had they done so, he’d have been spot on with his prediction of a heroic 4-5 loss.

So with that final game uncompleted in the closest match we’ve had this season so far, the final score was 3-5.  A win for well-coached youth over… well, over whatever it was we had!