St Andrews 0
Penguins 9
Mens Division 1
With Nick out after hurting his hand, Adam busy at work and Anushka suffering from 'man flu' symptoms, I finally got my first call up for the Mens 1 team in the highest division. As if my expectations of an insanely tough match couldn't get much higher, Penguin arrived with a strong team determined to make sure of victory, and in turn be crowned this year's champions of the Sutton League.
Our team was Neil & Martin, Conor & Robin, me & Ben. I did my best to throw a spanner in the works by misplacing my rackets at the start of the match, frantically legging it back to Wallington to search the house and back to the church again! I ended up borrowing Neil's spare. In the event, me & Ben were 3rd pair up first against Tao & Arak (the latter playing for Canada...gulp!) and unsurprisingly lost in successive games 12-21 11-21. Surprisingly we just outscored Neil & Martin against that pair, (11 in each game) so I was pleased with that. Our second rubber was against a quick powerful pair, Yestin & Chris - again we succumbed to 12 and 15, and again outscored Conor & Robin who posted 11 and 9.
Our final rubber of the match was against Vibul's nephew Jay and his partner Colin. We made a sluggish start and some poor unforced errors handed us a heavy defeat to 9, but we were actually ahead in the second game 16-12 before somehow conspiring to lose to 17 - seems like the opposition found another couple of gears just when they needed it.
It was always going to be super tough against a team who normally play 2 divisions above my usual, but overall a good experience. Hopefully as 3rd pair we didn't disgrace ourselves, but taking into account that the other pairs were also unable to win a rubber shows just how tough Penguins were on the night. Thanks to Neil and Anushka for giving me the opportunity to play, I really played my heart out every single point!
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