Junior British League

2006/2007

After the first five matches on the first weekend, we were in 4th place in the premier division – the highest in the UK. We were hopeful that we could improve on this position, but competing at the top level was not going to be easy. We soon learnt that a couple of the teams had big guns playing that were not present on the first weekend. This was going to make it difficult to move up the table.

Our first opponents were from London Progress and, having got a draw last time, we hoped to go one better and get a win. The boys always find the first matches difficult to get going and we needed to get off to a good start, but that was not to be as Stewart lost in 4 to Mathew Ware. It was now down to Chris to even things up, which he truly did coming from a set down to win in 4 against Richard who is just below him on the rankings. Next it was Matthew Dodds against Ashley Srokes. With some outstanding returns from Ashley, as well as the nets and edges going against us, Matt lost comfortably three straight. Unfortunately, that seemed to set the tone for the rest of the match with the exception of the last encounter between Matt and Richard. Some brilliant play saw an excellent match which Richard won 12-10 in the 5th, giving Progress a 5-1 win and not what we were expecting. Next was York Gardens who had Darius Knight (England No2) playing this time. Having lost 5-1 last time it was difficult to see how we could get anything better. This was proved correct with Chris being our most consistent player gaining the only win over Chris Lewis who is ranked 5 places above him on the National rankings.

Our last match of the day was against Barnet who, at this stage, was top of the division. Having lost 5-1 last time and against the same players, we were not optimistic given our last two results. However, the boys were determined to get something from this match and that they truly did. We started at 16:40 and were still playing well after everyone else had gone home. Four of the 6 games went to 5 sets, and it was Chris who won the first of the 5 setters against William Maybanks, a National Squad member. It was Stewart’s turn to get his first win of the day but he was up against Vytas Rybakas, 15 places above him on the rankings. He did not let this faze him, coming through 11-7 in the 5th. Although Matt took Alim Hirji once again to 5 sets he was not able to close it out so it was now down to Chris against Vytas to give us a draw at least. Once again it went to 5, and Chris got the result we needed by winning 11-9. Matthew then played William and gained his first win 11-6 in the 4th. Unfortunately Stewart lost to Alim but we had won the match by this time which was a great result given the score line last time. We left the hall at 19:30 being the only ones left, along with the umpire and referee.

Sunday and our first match was against Ormesby "A" who were just above us in the table. However, they had a Chinese boy who was in this country at school, and, as we thought, he was very strong and had won all his games fairly easily. We managed to get a draw last time but they had a weaker third player and we knew it was going to be different this time. We got off to the best possible start with Chris winning the first game, but that was where it all ended, losing 5-1. Our final match was against the Irish Boys and sitting at the bottom of the table with no wins we were confident of a win, and this we truly did 4-2.

We thank the parents and the boys for all their support and two enjoyable weekends despite the fact that we had hoped to have finished further up the table. Ending up in fifth place out of 48 teams overall I think is something that the club can be proud. It is not certain that we will have a team in this competition next season, as the boys will be doing exams next year and not competing or playing as much.