Southport ‘B’ 6 – 4 Southport ‘A’
In the upset of the season, Southport ‘B’ pulled off a remarkable win against their higher-ranked, and higher-placed ‘A’ team colleagues. With both teams fielding a junior player at number 4 (the toss of a coin allocating Danny Houghton to the ‘B’ team and Jonny Cummins to the ‘A’ team), but otherwise having their regular line-up, the stage was set for a narrow win for the ‘A’ team. However, Peter Tod (3-0 vs John Goulding) and Dave Ferguson (narrowly losing 9-11 in the 5th to Colin Fyles) made an early declaration of intent that this was to be no pushover. The next two games went to form as Danny and Jonny lost to the vastly more experienced Nigel Pilkington and Stan Clarke respectively. So, 2-2 after the first round of singles and it really was turning out to be a close affair.
Next was a tremendous contest between Peter Tod, club rank 1, and Colin Fyles, club rank 2. Colin got off to a flying start, with a mix of patient pushing and devastating backhand winners to take the first game 5-11, but Peter responded with his own mix of forehand chops, drop shots, counter-hits and forehand drives to take the second 11-7. The contest then see-sawed until Peter edged ahead to win an even closer final game 11-8. A great game to watch!
Meanwhile Dave, in his best form of the season, was beating Nigel fairly comfortably and then Stan’s sustained hard hitting was too much, even for John’s quick reaction defence.
At 5-2 for the ‘home’ team, the final singles contest was between Danny and Jonny. As division 3 finalist at the Southport Championships, Danny may have expected to win comfortably, but after a few early nerves, Jonny fought back to take the third game 6-11 with some great counter-drives and solid defence. This seemed to galvanize Danny into action and he finally came through 11-8 in the 4th.
The evening finished with two more see-saw contests, the ‘A’ team winning both doubles in the 5th game.
As a spectator, this was a great match to witness, and we can be proud of both teams, especially the two lads who stepped up to play in the second division. I hope next season brings more matches like that.
Alan Nolan