Melbourn won 17-3

The 2nds second game of the season was against a newly promoted side – St. Ivo 2nds. All the 2s…

Breaking from the numerology, the first match on court was the 1st strings, as Jan Brynjolffssen took on the Saints Harry Aldridge. Harry held the upper hand in the early stages of game 1, with Jan fighting back with some early takes on backhand drops and lofted balls. He got into a 12-11 lead… but then poorly thought through and even more weekly executed shot choices on that point let a good position slip (a result of Harry’s pressure), the score was 12-all, and the Ivo player was on his way.
The advice to Jan was to keep the ball off Harry’s step across volleys. In game 2 he… didn’t manage this. In fact there were a number of three shot rallies with Harry’s service variations (… deliberately down the middle!) causing confusion. The third was less one-sided, but by now Harry’s tail was well and truly up as Jan went down 12-15, 3-15, 8-15.

Fortunately for Melbourn this first string only made the match 1-1 as St. Ivo had forfeited the fifth string due to an illness-related late drop-out. And on court the other three strings all went swimmingly for the 2nds, Colm O’Gorman (2), Matt Walker (3) and Gareth Jones (4) all winning 3-0, and all including one runaway game.

For Gareth this was the third and was something of a reaction to him making a meal of the second. Gareth always looked like he had too much game for Shaun Smith, cruising through the first. But Gareth wouldn’t be Gareth without putting some obstacles in his own way – his toughest opponent is often himself. Things got nervy, two game balls came and went at 14-12 and at 15-14 down Gareth even had to save one himself. But he did, and then played two consistent rallies to draw the errors. Shaun subsided after this as Gareth rattled through the third in a near bagel, completing a 15-7, 17-15, 15-1 victory.

Matt was up against Sean Gant at third string, with game one relatively close as Matt kept edging a few points in front, but then making errors to allow Sean to close again. Partly this was down to shot choice – Matt was going for the standard play of working over the back corners, but with Sean positioning himself very deep this wasn’t working as effectively as hoped. Game two saw Matt trusting more in his volley drops… which are his preferred play anyway. This was comprehensive (15-4) and though game three was the same score as the first this game felt very different as it was simply a case of when Matt would put his foot down to pull away. He did this from 12-11 to round off a 15-11, 15-4, 15-11 win.

Concurrent with Matt’s win Colm was seeing off Alex Chapman at second string. This one was closest in the opening game… but not that close as Colm was always a comfortable distance clear. The second and the third were cruises as Colm’s movement took Alex’s attacking game away from him – it simply became of question of the Melbourn player’s winners to unforced errors ratio. This remained good and positive, rounding off a 15-10, 15-5, 15-7 win that made the overall match score 17-3 in the 2nds favour.