Melbourn won 9-5

The firsts kicked off their 2024 summer league campaign with a daunting away trip at Nuffield.

First on court, were the second strings. This pitted Jason Burgon (an honorary Melbourn team member for the second summer in a row) up against the sizeable Tim Bloomer. Tim is known around the Herts circuit for his low and hard-hitting approach, which was fairly evident in the first game as he continued to drive Jason deep. Jason was able to negate this power play with some of his tricky boasts catching Bloomer off guard to remain in the first at 7-7. A couple of errors from Jason and lucky bounces in Tim’s favour eventually swung the first game to Tim, 11-7. The second game began in much the same fashion as the first with Tim trying to pin Jason into the back corners and Jason trying to wrong-foot Tim with one of his stylish shots. As the game wore on, Tim started reading some of these shots and was able to move forward in anticipation and put Jason under pressure. Tim ultimately taking the second 11-5. Jason, now feeling a bit looser from the long drive, started the third game well and was able to get in front of Tim more often and dictate the play. With Jason moving more freely and Tim tiring, the third was nip and tuck. Unfortunately for Jason, the backhand corner was clearly working favourably for Tim and a couple of fortunate nicks helped Tim win the third 12-10.

Next up was the third string tie which saw Mike Herd take on a familiar face to the Melbourn team in Teejay Sogunro. Mike started off strongly, holding the T and keeping Teejay behind him – this allowed Mike to dictate the rallies and attack when the opportunity presented itself; resulting in Mike taking the first 11-4.  The second didn’t start as planned, with Mike losing a bit of width and Teejay taking hold of the T. Mike did well to keep in the game at 7-7, but suddenly lost his way falling to an 11-8 loss. After some advice from the chauffer for the evening (Jase) Mike went back to basics in the third, keeping Teejay in the back and commanding the rallies. This helped Mike build a 10-5 lead; only for Teejay to pull back to 10-9…Fortunately for Mike, he was able to pull out a ‘Tim Bloomer’ shot and hit a fortuitous nick to seal the third 11-9. The fourth started at a frantic pace with Mike building a 3-1 lead when a ‘discussion’ broke out between the players and marker. Fortunately for Mike this helped him concentrate even more so to develop a 7-1 lead and ultimately unassailable lead to win the fourth 11-5.

The final tie, and the one for the match, had Matt Sampson up against newcomer for Nuffield Andy Duckworth. Matt dazzling in the warmup with his vast array of shots was able to take this into the first game and saw him wrong-foot Andy on a number of occasions. With the game keenly poised at 7-7, Matt was able to put this deception to good use and close out the first 11-8. The second saw Andy come back strongly to take the second. So, there we were…1-1 in matches and 1-1 in the decider. Matt clearly feeling the effects of not having played competitively for a couple of months went on for the third and produced some great (and some not so great) squash to take the third 11-9. Could Matt seal the win 3-1 and ensure Melbourn first team had their first win in Div 1 for two seasons? Of course he could, closing out 11-8 in the fourth to take the match 2-1.

A good win to start the season!