A chaotic evening over at the hall in Brixham which saw the two teams battling for the Division 2 runners-up spot in Brixham Gulls who took on NA Raptors and Torre Titans who were playing Brixham Trawlers 

Gulls were flying high over Raptors at the halfway point with only Ed Moffatt able to claim 2 legs in an eventual 11-4 win for Allen Pack to take Gulls up to 5-0.

It then got a little difficult for Joseph Edwards against a resilient Huw Darch who, in my opinion, is playing the best TT of his life this season. Huw knuckled down to win games 3 and 4 both 11-8 to win raptor’s first and send young Joseph off to storm off to lick his wounds and unable to resist the temptation for a fight with the net stanchion on the way. Fortunately, nothing was broken except perhaps a bit of sporting spirit.

Alan Maynard then went into his final game against Ed feeling reasonable confident having not yet dropped a set, but slightly nervy knowing that 3 wins would take him closer to joint top of the Div 2 averages. Ed proved to be a monumental barrier for Alan, playing just the right tactical game to tie Alan down and then forcing him to reach out from his comfort zone to start attacking. It was nip and tuck right up until 9-9 when Alan was able to take the last 2 points to just edge it. That game, amongst others, were probably decided by a net and an edge (mostly nets) along the way. Credit to NA Raptors for shrugging off Gulls’ advantage in the net stakes early on.

We then had to split tables to finish the remaining games, and that saw Gulls extend their lead to 8-1 with Allen beating Huw in four and Joseph recovering from his earlier loss to beat Paul Hine in straight sets.

Unfortunately, we ran out of time for the doubles, so had to concede. We hope that doesn’t have an impact on taking that 2^nd place as Titans were able to match Gulls’ 8-2 final score on the other table.

Big thanks to Paul, Huw and Ed from the Raptors for having to put up with lucky nets, flying balls, screams and tantrums from the opposition and no doubles. We hope that next season will be a little less tense!!

On to Tuesday for Gulls’ showdown with Titans!

Alan.