AVON SENIORS – MATCH REPORT
Last Sunday, 15th January, the senior side played three matches at Waterside TTC in Southampton, and after one win out of three from the previous day, the team needed at least a win to ensure staying in Division 1.
Surrey 8 Avon 2 - Last season Adam Laws was the Surrey No.1 and he is now playing at No.3 due to Federico Viterbo and Andreas Pusch joining them. This meant Martin Gunn, Anthony Kent and Joe Ratajczak had a tough start to the day with the only win coming from hard bat specialist Martin in five sets over Andreas. Emily Standing also had an excellent five set win against Isobelle Jouber. Nina Kadir, making her debut for the senior side, lost both her games but pushed Isobelle close in four ends.
Sussex 2nds 7 Avon 3 - The quality of the opposition didn't relent in the second match with top veteran Paul Carter beating Anthony and Martin, and Kate Cheer defeating Michele Reeves and Nina. Joe played extremely well to win both his games in the fifth against Harry McCarney and Pedro Santos but any hopes of a draw were dashed when Martin lost 14-12 in the fifth to Harry. Anthony also missed out in the fifth to Pedro.
Hampshire 7 Avon 3 - This was a match which had lots of action and close games and Avon could have got at least a draw had things gone our way. Five matches went the distance of which Michele was the only one to come out on top beating Edyta Schmidt. Anthony missed out against Wozjieck Placek, Emily to Edyta, Michele to Amy Blagbrough and Dave Reeves to Wozjieck. Dave's match with Wozjieck was the classic attacker versus defender encounter and did have a very unusual outcome - all five games went to deuce (12-14, 13-11, 12-14, 12-10, 11-13). With Dave and Joe both beating Ed Slot in four ends this concluded the matches.
We will have to wait and see the final positions in the division, but with one win out of six, the team is in danger of relegation and relying on the results of other matches to stay up. Last season we beat all three counties above by similar scorelines so it shows how the standard of opposition has gone up considerably. Either way we have a strong squad of players and will look forward to next season whichever division it is.
Dave Reeves
