Report by team captain Jeff Faulkner
On Thursday the GC 5 PLUS Level Play Team welcomed high flying Bath to Stoney Ley for the last match of the season. Bath had won three and drawn one of their fixtures this season and needed just a draw against us, the bottom club, to win the league. A tough ask for us indeed especially as stalwarts Ian Lambert and Gill Richardson were unavailable for this match, so young rookie David Kaner made his debut and joined the old hands of Jeff Faulkner, Howard Freeman, Peter Hill and Eileen Holt.
Captain Jeff Faulkner after consultation with Eileen Holt sprang a surprise just before play was due to begin by dropping Lawn 1 from the schedule and preferring notorious Lawn 4, as in their opinion lawn 1 had some areas of long grass which were negating the slopes, whereas Lawn 4 had been well shaved. This was to prove a masterstroke.
The match began under a cloudless sky with unusually still conditions. The handicaps of the two teams were very closely matched. The first round consisted of two doubles and a singles game, with Peter Hill chosen to play the singles for Broadwas after taking a game off Stuart Smith in the blocks earlier in the week – so a man in form we thought. However, he appeared to be still hung over from celebrating his win and crashed 1 – 7 against fellow six handicapper Ally Hoyland. In the doubles the nascent pairing of David and Jeff overcame a sticky start and the loss of the first two hoops to triumph 7-4 with the benefit of David’s smooth hoop running whilst Howard and Eileen were edged out 7 – 5.
The second round which followed the same format as the first saw Eileen Holt win the singles with a most impressive six foot jump shot on the 11th hoop, a loss for David and Howard in one doubles and Peter and Jeff winning their doubles but only after some stern words from Jeff to Peter in the expletive vernacular that Peter frequently uses on the lawns. The message conveyed was to stop fiddling around and just ******* hit it!
After the first two rounds it was all square at 3 – 3 with the third round of five singles to be played before lunch. There were good wins for Peter who after the aforementioned discussion was fully engaged and back on song, and Eileen. Jeff was hammered 7 -1 by the maverick five handicap David Veal who either hit everything or missed everything depending which game he was playing in during the day! Unfortunately there were also narrow 7 – 6 defeats for both Howard and David, so lunch was taken with Bath 6 – 5 up and looking confident. By this time the Bath bun had come out and the Bath team were stripping off as if they meant business. Jeff then decided some help was needed so he contacted his mythical twin Zeph ( short for Zephyrus the Greek God of the west wind) to fire up the Broadwas breeze which fairly quickly extinguished the Bath bun with ominous cloud cover resulting in the Bath team having to reclothe and start muttering about the strength of the wind.
The fourth round again consisted of five singles and it was Jeff’s turn to choose the match ups. He decided to go for broke with some imaginative pairings which raised the eyebrows of the Bath captain. Winless Howard was paired against Ally who had won all of all her games on the basis that a Freeman fantasia was long overdue and Eileen who had won her first two singles was up against Feona who was Bath’s weakest player. Jeff took on Bob who was Bath’s highest ranked player, David played David the Maverick and Peter had to overcome Bath’s most experienced player. Amazingly this was highly successful with all five home players winning including a staggering 7 -2 win for Howard. This left Bath 10 – 6 down and needing to win all of the last four singles to take the league title.
Jeff again raised the Bath captain’s eyebrows by leaving himself out of the last round so that he could patrol the junction of the 4 lawns in case a referee was needed. Eileen proved herself the chatelaine of Lawn 2 with her fourth successive singles win on that lawn and the Freeman fantasia reached a crescendo on Lawn 4 as he raced to a 6 -0 lead over five handicap Bob Hart before easing to a 7 -3 win. On an afternoon like this, inevitably, there were also excellent wins for David and Peter to make it nine wins out of nine in the afternoon with a staggering hoop score of 62 against 31 and a landslide victory of 14 – 6, which resulted in the Broadwas team finishing 4th out of 6 in the league.
Sally Helvey, the Bath captain who couldn’t play because her handicap had dropped to four, said her team were ‘totally gutted’
Congratulations to new boy David Kaner on a strong debut and a worthy handicap reduction from eight to seven.
Jeff Faulkner
(More pictures below)
