We’ve noted Lutterworth topped the table after their last successive wins and QDJC already beat Lutterworth, so we know the opponent is good and is a must win for us to keep the pressure on the score board. No major changes in the team, but Ben driving back from Cornwall and a little gesture of tiredness made captain to do a last minute pairing change playing Ben & Daan as first and Sam & Kiranam as second pair. We all set for the games but opponents captain is missing, so a quick agreement was made to start the first pair games. Daan & Ben started a little sluggish with too many early unforced errors (sorry to call out) , but the pair have played better after warming up. They catch’ed up the score later from behind to 18 in the first game, but the momentum is with opponent and few last minute error’s costed both the games for our first pair handing over the first rubber. Opponents captain is still no where seen, while playing the second game. He reached @ 8.30. Sam & Kiranam has to start the game quickly to save the time. It’s the rush and the pressure costed the first game has been lost to 17. We can see our first pair loosing already and it’s a must win for Sam & Kiranam and what a turn around , it’s tough fight with quite young pair with half of our ages returning all the shots, so the game reached to a different level. Within short learnings, we found a game plan , both the pair are good with no weakness with back hand/smashes/ drops - the only way we thought is move them around the court. It worked out !! we won the second game 21 - 19 going for knockout to win the rubber. We know what to do with the pair !! We got the rubber winning the last game 21 - 18. We’re just half way through the game and we saw clock is already ~9.10
Sam & Kiranam continued the moment with opponents best first pair but could not win the first game, but won the second game 21 -19 taking them to third, which was almost with us 18 - 18. I know the rubber is within our hands, but the pressure serve from Sam was short taking the rubber away from us. On the side court, Daan & Ben gave full efforts and successfully brought us the rubber. One of their second pair broke strings for three rackets borrowing spares from their team 😁We’re 2 -2 rubbers before the splits and the clock has only 15 min left. Daan & Kiranam seen no contention with their split and have easily got the first game 21 - 13 and whistle has been blown on the match point @20- 7 in second game where opponent is okay to stop, so we’re 3-2 up at the stoppage having no time to play the remaining games for Sam & Ben.
Sam has reached out the Rugby match secretary explaining the delays and match has been awarded to us with 4 - 2 rubbers and 9 - 6 games. It should have been a draw ideally, but the opponents carelessness brought us a cheeky WIN for us 😂😁
RM2 Captain Kiranam
Chris & Dan, Ian & Shaz and Darren & Tom… (who both recently came from a pint!!🍻😂) were fielded tonight to face the might of Millennium’s finest! The opposition fielded a few new faces in order to strengthen! 😱
Darren and Tom put up a good effort but were unfortunately unable to win any of their games. There were a few unforced errors which allowed the opposition to win, Tom was quite tired from literally coming back from holiday 🥵
Shaz and Ian as usual played excellent. They defeated their 1st and 3nd pairs with no issues - the standard Ian and Shaz show. There was resistance against their 2nd pair but the boys ultimately came out on top. There were raised eyebrows at a certain line call but the boys carried on and won all the games no sweat 👏
Dan was supporting a small blister on his foot due to the tournament he won over the weekend so Chris did his best to support, but most rallies were over in 2-3 hits and Dan often turned up the heat and did his super smashes - one of the players said to Darren ‘that guy is really good, to which Darren said ‘he’s alright’ 🤣 Me and Dan were very pleased how we played and none of our games went over 10! 🤩
Final score was 6-3.
Our Captain Phil turned up to see the last 30 minutes to make sure everything was all wrapped up neatly. What a guy 🥰
We are now one step closer to getting promoted to Division II which is a landmark for Trinity. Thank you to Tom and Darren for stepping up and coming along!
Vice Captain Chris
This was our return fixture away. Having lost 1st time round 6-0, we hoped to get a few games off them this time. We manged a 5 - 1 loss this time, so a small improvement!! Some really good games again, we just can’t quite turn our close games into wins
RB3 Captain Tracey