Week 4 of the Herts Summer League and the 2nds were still looking for our first win – not quite what we had hoped for after just missing out on promotion in the final match of 2024. True, we had only played two matches having also had a bye week in there… but even so.

However, our team looked strong for this one. And Gosling had also started slowly. The first match was sure to provide a breakthrough for someone as Will Bradshaw (3) took on Jack Moule; Will was looking for his first win in a Herts League match (though he did pick up his first victories in adult Squash in the Cambs winter league) whilst Jack was simply looking for his first game in County League level Squash. As it turned out both would achieve it. The first game gave little hint of the drama to come as Will dominated completely, his hitting and length too crisp and clean for Jack. However, he lost his way somewhat in the second, producing errors. This resulted in a bit of a spiral of pain of errors causing stress causing more errors. Jack was there to point – he was on the board. Will was rather annoyed with himself after that game, but did a decent job of composing himself for the next two. There were still mistakes, particularly in not calling for lets when he would have been awarded obvious strokes (the one where he literally ducked under Jack’s armpit to get through will stick in the memory), but it was just cool and calm enough to secure the 15-4, 13-15, 15-13, 15-12 win. Which meant everyone was happy. Well, reasonably happy.

Will’s match set the pattern for the evening as Melbourn players proved stronger than Gosling ones… but were not as focused as they needed to be to close out what probably should have been 3-0 wins. Matt Walker (2) rattled into a 2-0 lead against Adrian Rates with two comfortable games, only for a dicey start to the third (falling 6-1 down) giving him too big a gap to close, especially against a tricky player like Adrian. More focus in the fourth saw Matt through 15-5, 15-8, 12-15, 15-10 though. Likewise Jan Brynjolffssen (1) who was up against Chris Tutton. Jan’s let down was even ore pronounced as he was seemingly on the brink of a straightforward straight games win when 2-0, 12-4 ahead, only to somehow contrive to lose 11 straight points and the third. Once again a sharpening up of focus was all that was called for as Jan wrapped up a 15-9, 16-14, 12-15, 15-5 win.

After the match Jan commented “We all made things harder for ourselves than we had to, which added a little drama to proceedings, but then we all got there in the end. So that’s good.”