Another tough week for the Barbarians as our late season form continued it’s now predictable 3-2 losing streak. This week’s team suffered from sicknote’s world record sniffly cold. That meant I was playing 1, John Loftus, Stephen Davey, Matt Pearson and Dean Wood making up the rest of the team.
First up were Dean and Matt against a strong 4 and 5 from HWU. Pressure was on Dean to win well at 5 considering his ‘luck’ to have been recovering from injury when the team order was sealed for the season. But his opponent was quick about the court and Dean was struggling to move his hulking vegetarian frame around the court fast enough. In the end, a 3-2 victory saw guile triumph over talent and Dean bagged us a winning start.
Over on the other court, Matt was tense and finding it difficult to score. From the balcony, the match looked pretty even, but a little better consistency saw his opponent win most of the long rallys. The impact was a 3-0 loss with a miserly 8 points for Matt which does not reflect how close this match was.
Next up were John and I. The fact that I can write about John’s game shows you just how quickly my game was over. After a promising start to go 6-0 up, superior fitness and talent were too much and a 3-0 loss put us at 1-2.
John meanwhile was having a right contest as he continued his strategy of ‘running like an eejit’ after everything. When I arrived on the balcony, John has just won the third to go 2-1 up. As they both went for water we took the opportunity to bring on the squeegy sponges to remove John’s dripping sweat form the soggy court. As the fourth got underway, John kept making outrageous retrieval after outrageous retrieval and completely wore his opponent down to win 3-1.
That brought up the 2-2 for what seems like the tenth time this season.
Last up was Stephen Davey, another of our fit ‘run til you drop’ brigade. But like so many games this season, we were unable to close out the last match. Stephen went down 3-1 while bravely carrying an injury, but it was just a 7 point haul this week.
That promotion is looking a tall order now. (Report: Mike D)
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