WEEK 10 REPORT, PART 2 OF WINTER LEAGUE 21/22
Premier Division
This week was just one match better than the previous week in that 2 matches were played. Hockley A turned in an excellent performance to beat current champions Thorpe Bay 7-2. Andy Cunningham & Ian Wall both taking their n3 matches and Matt Stringer picking up the other point. For Thorpe Bay Paul Sayer and Keith Willett toom a game each with Gurjit Bhambra having a rare blank evening.
The other match saw Brand Identity A prove too strong for Hadleigh Forum A With Simon Jacob and Richard Jackman both getting Hat tricks and David Jacob 1 to take the match 7-2.
Division 1
The Hadleigh Forum derby this week must have caused some interesting banter between clubmates. Forum B had to call on reinforcements from Division 2 in the form of Dave Thomas; whilst, due to an injury and prior commitments, Forum C could only field two players. Dave acquitted himself very well, beating Mark Everard and giving Paul Fawell a good run for his money. Tony Jacks was the B team’s star, though, being undefeated in a 7 – 2 home win.
Runnymede C had a bad day at the office, losing 9 – 0 at home to Mapledene. POM Steve Woodley, Dawn Baldry and Mike Johnston were all undefeated. The home side’s Andy Humphries was their best player.
Veteran Stanford Le Hope A’s Chris Crooks should be proud of his performance when visiting Hockley B. There haven’t been too many players that have come away from playing this team unbeaten, but Chris did just this, and took the Player of the Match prize, as well. Unfortunately, Chris’s club could only find two players for the match. Whilst teammate Peter Weatherall added an impressive straight sets win over David Chenery, Stanford lost 4 – 5. Wins from Keith Abbott and Stuart Adshead edged the tie in Hockley’s favour.
Another away team only managing to find two players this week was Hockley C. They found it hard going with hosts Lentern B not giving much away. Gus Heath, Wayne Farmer and Paul Sims all proved too strong. However, Joerg Poeschus easily overcame Wayne to obtain Hockley’s only success in an 8 – 1 victory for Lentern.
Regrettably, it was necessary to postpone two fixtures this week.
Division 2
RESSC have dominated Division 2 this season boasting the most experienced squad in this league and, if there were any doubts about where they would finish in the league table, then that ended this week as they disposed of second in the table Wakering 8-1. Admittedly Wakering were without their best player this season Zac England, but whether he would have been able to dent RESSC’s progress remains an unanswered question. In his absence Paul England won the consolation point against Ron Coutts and he and Stewart Mills both took Bob Skews to five sets but Bob and Richard Gill remained unbeaten to continue their march to the “title”. They are 14 points clear of Wakering and have a game in hand.
In the race for second place Brand Identity C and Canvey B both closed the gap on Wakering with wins against Stanford B and Invicta B respectively. Brand Identity’s 6-3 triumph came as a result of two wins each for the team of Ross Letham, Jenne Seibolt and Ash Sivanandam but none could get the better of Robert Salvage who dropped just one set all evening.
Canvey’s win was a more impressive 8-1 win with hat tricks for Daniel Kellard and Lee McGonagle and a brace for Joe Hills. Steve Lennox got the consolation point for Invicta.
A resurgent Custom’s team won a close encounter 5-4 against Canvey C with Richard Kidd taking the POTM honours backed up by a brace for Amar Al-Soufi. Key match was Richard’s five set win against Kevin Walsingham edging home 11/9 in the fifth. Kevin won two for the Islanders with a single win each for Ray Baker and Stephen Parker both over Breda Kidd.
Keith Baxter and Dave Youngman took the honours in Invicta B’s 7-2 win over Hockley D with Brendan Raja claiming the other point. Hermann Maier and Keith Denyer got the points for Hockley but spare a thought for Alwine Jarvis who went to five sets twice against Brendan and Keith but was just edged out.
There was a similar result in the Stanford derby between their C and D teams with the C team coming out on top. Mark Farley and Jake Santiago both recorded hat tricks and there was a single win for Jack Diver. Dave Arnett and James Parker got the points for the C team.
The final game of the week saw a rare outing for father and son John and Ollie George as Hockley E took on Hadleigh Forum D. Together they led Hockley to a 6-3 win both claiming hat tricks albeit Ollie’s was a lot more straight forward, not dropping a set all night, whilst John had to overcome Jeff Gritzman and Jean Catley in close five set matches. Jeff and Jean and Sineh Ball all got the better of Ben Brown.
Player of the Week – Robert Salvage
Team of the Week - Customs
