Island Exhausts Vets closing in on C league title
Team AON became strong favourites to become undisputed A league champions when they secured maximum points against Stone Art Squash Team. The Crease boys, Robin and Jason, looking very unruffled in their straightforward 3-0 wins, conceded very few points. However at the top and the bottom of the playing order Pat Fitzpatrick and Chris Cave each dropped games on the way to their wins. The closest match was between Mason McLarney and Lyndon Cheetham and considering that this was Lyndon’s first game back after a long injury break he did exceptionally well to take two games off Mason with the final points score of 33-31. Team AON now have a good lead in the A league.
Cannell Print dropped only 11 points on their way to a win over Crazy Phil Shaw Vehicles. Crazy’s Ashley Sandyford-Sykes and Mike Hayler both did the Mountain Marathon at the weekend and were perhaps still recovering as they lost 3-0 and 3-1 to Thom Whiteway and James Martin respectively. Josh Green was the other victor for Cannell with a 3-1 over James Ramsey. The Crazy’s winning duo were former Shark Mark Webster-Smith and current Shark’s captain Dave Freer. The teams were separated by 40 points at the end of the night with a match score of 169-129.
In the C league Island Exhaust Vets maintained their lead with a 4-1 victory over Falcons, helped by the Falcons all having to play up as their number one was instructed to self isolate. Falcons captain Vusimbe Zivave played a great match at number five taking the only win for his team 3-0. Vets Gerrit Du Toit and Mark Stratford also had 3-0 victories at fourth and first string respectively. At number two Peter Sharples had to work very hard to beat Vicky Watterson in four games but once again the match of the night was Les Callow’s, this time against Simon Jones. Callow was not without his opportunities to finish the match in three or four games but was taken all the way to five again.
Second placed team Santander Racketeers Academy kept the pressure on the Vets by dropping just 7 points in their 4-1 win over Buchanan & Pitts Misfits. Racketeers Fraser Dorling, Steven Wright and Charlie Beard all enjoyed 3-0 wins, though Charlie’s was a walkover win. The other two matches were 3-1 results with one going to each team, Racketeer Andrew Brown defeated Terry Holt and Misfit John Watterson came out on top in a very close match with Harry Douthwaite. Santander Racketeers Academy now trail the Vets by 80 points which will be a very hard gap to bridge.
Outcasts Dragons played Hansard Racketeers in the other C league match. The Dragons have struggled to field a full five players recently and could only put out four for this fixture. However all four of these players won their matches with skipper Darren Smethurst, Phil Whittam and Andy McLarney all winning 3-0. Dragons number two Stuart Highy had a very close match with Tom Burrows with all four games being decided by only 2 points. Racketeers only win was a walkover at fifth string. The final score was 205-177 to Outcasts Dragons.
