Melbourn lost 17-3

Another week, another very strong opposition for the 2nds.
Just like Comberton the previous Wednesday, Walden are pushing for promotion to Division 2 and looked every inch a side of that level. Their top two appeared particularly strong on paper… and also on the court. But we will get to those games later.
First on though was Mark Asker (5) against home skipper John Goodfellow. John was briefly a Melbourn player, featuring for the 2nds in 2018-19 and playing in our internal leagues. He and Mark had actually ever met in those, but the two had come across each other twice before in team matches. And on each occasion Mark had run out the 3-0 winner. Well, make that three out of three, 3-0 once again as the stylistic match-up worked heavily in Mark’s favour, his powerful game keeping John pinned deep as the Melbourn player came through 15-10, 15-11, 15-8. Mark is now 19-2 all time in team games for us, and on a 13-match winning run that extends back to October 2019… we really have to get him out more often!
Our other realistic chance of winning points came at no.4, where Gareth Jones took on Kirk Archibald. This one was nip-and-tuck all the way through each game, two of which got to 11-all and the other to 11-10. The problem for Gareth was the only period of games that proved one-sided was the most crucial one – the last handful of points. Three times it came to the crunch, and three times errors came. Frustrating as Gareth found the right tactics at various stages through the match… but never seemed to want to stick to them. The game scores were 12-15, 11-15, 11-15.
We won’t spend long on strings 2 and 3 as Liam Murphy (2) and Colm O’Gorman (3) struggled significantly against Will Blower and Mark Scott respectively. Liam started OK, but his head dropped towards the end of the opener was he figured out Will’s level was not going to vary, whilst Mark’s shot making was too good even for Colm’s recently impressive movement and defensive skills. Both finished 3-0, neither Melbourn player threatening double figures in any of their games.
That just left Jan Brynjolffssen (1), who wasn’t expecting much joy either against Simon Goddard as the Walden player hadn’t lost a Div.3 match, um, ever. Or even a game recently, Simon having won his previous 13 matches at top string all 3-0. Oh. Jan gave it his best shot though, attempting to defend as much as he could and when he could get Simon behind him attempt to pull the trigger on any attacking chances. That worked to some extent, also helped by unexpected errors of Simon’s racquet to mean Jan had achieved his aim for the match, get to double figures in a game, after just the first (only just, 15-10, but hey). An ill-judged comment about a loose serve on the first point of the second fired Simon up to provide a masterclass for the rest of that game (begging the question of just how hard the Walden player had been trying in the first) but the third was back to being close as Jan’s attempt to battle was proving more successful than he could have hoped for. In fact, if a backhand drop that Simon had given up chasing at 12-10 to Jan had gone up… but it was in the tin and that was the encouragement Simon needed to up his intensity for the last few rallies to send Jan to defeat 10-15, 2-15, 12-15.
Jan was the stand-in skipper for the day with Roger not playing. His comment after the match was “I knew we were in for a tough evening when I saw their team. Simon, Will and Mark are extremely strong players for the top three at this level. I thought Mark always had a good chance of beating John at fifth string and he delivered excellently on that, and on another evening Gareth would have taken at least one game of his, but we were always up against it overall.”