Firsts home v Heriot Watt 2's (Tue, Nov 27,07)

A rescheduled match brought forward and swapped to our venue. Mark Dutton was on against #5 Russel Hobson, Mark got dragged into his opponent's unconventional style, it went game-by game and Mark lost out in the fifth.

Gerald Suggett had a 20 minute battle with #4 Chris MacNamee for the first 3 points, after that the Riccarton man didn't get another as Suggers then double-grannied him pronto.

Ali G beat his namesake Richard G at #3 convincingly 3-0. Chris Mair at #2 had a tight match with Bertrand Lucotte who ran the miles but still got cleaned out; 3-0.
Mike Perring came up against Mark Rotton at his latest club, Mike was a bit shaky legs wise but still ground it out 3-2.

Overall 4-1, 19-7 on points. No team cook for the hastily rescheduled match, Franco's Pizzas came to the rescue. Man of the match anyone?

Seconds home vs Waverley Thursday 22/11/07

This division is proving to be a very difficult one indeed with an
extraordinarily high standard of opposition week after week. The seconds
are all continuing to play very well and everyone is giving their utmost but
once again the quality of opposition was just too much.

The evening started out very well with Pete Young at No 5 putting it to
Waverley's hyperactive jumping jack, Andy Murray. Pete won the first,
narrowly lost the second and third and won the fourth all being high quality
games. Andy stepped up the pace and left Pete behind in the last but it
could so easily have been a win in four rather than a 2-3 loss.

On the other court at No 4 Pete Tweedie started out where he'd left off on
the previous two weeks against the very imposing figure of Mike Reid ... ie
only gathered a few points to his name. The real Pete finally returned in
the third and he got as far as having a couple of game points but eventually
lost out 0-3. Had he manged to nab that game he would have been a special
to carry on for a win, but t'wasn't to be.

Dougie Brown was up next at No 3 against Alan Ramsay. The first game was a
close loss and then it just slipped further away in each of the next two.
Dougie seemed to be lacking his usual sharpness and was being put under a
lot of pressure by some very consistent width and angle play by Alan and he
seemed to spend most of the games digging awkward balls out of both back
corners. A very good performance by Alan to dominate one of the Grange's
most consistent players.

At No 2, Pete Cockburn's game against Niven Simpson was a festival of smacking the bejapers out of the ball, Pete was soaking up everything the big kiwi threw at him, forcing some tin-bashing out of Niven. However Peter ended up retrieving from near the back door which was never going to allow him to let go his own shots and move the big man around and turn him No an easy ask, this one went 3-0 to Waverley.

It was always going to be tough at No 1 for Mark Dutton against Rob Speight
and so it proved. Only a handful of points gathered in the first two games
although not playing badly at all. Just too consistent and mistake free a
performance from Rob. The third game saw Mark move to a well deserved 5-0
lead and dominate proceedings which showed what could have been.....but Rob
changed the game and put the stop to that upstart behaviour and eventually
grafted his way back to a 6-9 win.

All in all, the seconds need a huge turnaround from here as we're already
staring into the abyss. We've all learnt that losing feeling and it is a
bit hard to get out of that once it gets a grip ...but we have to give it
our best shot.

With the 100th dinner party on in the members lounge, we cobbled together a makeshift table in the committee room, the Waverley boys were impressed with the setting, the unusual variety of pizza's and the online booking system.

Firsts v Watsonians 3 (Tues, Nov 20, '07)

Another tough one, and a good scoreline.

Christy took a straight win against Mike 3-0
Stokey played fabulous squash for 4 games against Gordon Fruish but "blew it" in the 5th.
Al won 3-1 against Jim Dougal - quite satisfying after Grange taking no games off Jim last season.
Chris and Ali played 5 long games of text book lengths, Chis eventually losing 2-3 (drop shot training on Sunday, Chris).
Mike P did the business at #1 winning 3-0 and securing the bonus points for Grange.

Match of the night was #3 Al for dispensing a difficult customer. (self awarded, trust you all agree)

Overall 3-2, 18-7 on points. An excellent result against a strong team, especially with Hamer away.

We were well fed and watered in the Watsonians' bar, and we did our best to make amends for misdemeanors on court. (reporter: Ali G)

Results and highlights from second mini league

Another very active league finishing in November with some competitive matches - click here to see the results of all the leagues.... Nov 2007 league

Trying to measure activity levels is tricky when some leagues were hit with injury pullouts, business trips or a small number of players who just didn't play any games. Making allowances for this I reckon that 78% of possible games were played, up from 74% in league 1. We have 21 players with a 100% record so far and 41 who played at least 75% of their games. Well done!

Congratulations to League 3 who played all their games, and Leagues 8 and 11 were right behind with all but one played!

The closest was league 11 where David Gillespie pipped Craig Turnbull by a single point - a 3-2 game between the two was the decider. Julia Lutte got ahead of Douglas Paul in League 9 (26-24) despite losing their head to head 3-2. And in league 2, Mark Dutton was irrepressible after a 3-1 win over the Loobster gave him top spot.

Too many candidates for Minileaguer of the month to single someone out, but David Gillespie, Alastair Gordon, Peter Menzies and Fiona McLaren were all dominant with four straight wins!

If you'd like to look at the new leagues, click here.... Dec 2007 league

If anyone new would like to join next time round, please leave a note on the board or email me at grangesquash@yahoo.co.uk. Enjoy your games and good luck!

Firsts v Dalgety Bay 2 (Wed, Nov 14, '07)

This was a night of tough games.

Stokey's cunning won 3-1 against Colin Boswell's fitness.
Al won 3-1 against the skillful Andy Gray.
Mike won 3-1 against Gerry Gemmell and his array of volley drops.
And Chris perservered for a comeback against the big Gerry Burton, who barely stepped off the T for 4 games, but finally cracked in the fifth 3-2.
Allan H took a swift 3-0 win against Craig Pounder.

Match of the night was #2 Chris Mair for a huge effort and comeback against an unenviable opponent.

Overall 5-0, 20-7 on points. With Grange 1 currently in 2nd place and Dalgety Bay hovering 15 points behind, this puts some decent points between us.

We went on to the Hillend Tavern for healthy portions of meat and potato.

Seconds home v Edin Uni Studs (Thurs, 15 Nov '07)

This was always going to be a tough assignment with the students having dropped only a point or two in their previous 5 outings. Peter Tweedie at #4 took on Rob, one of their 3 lefthanders(gaelic cioto'g). Peter had a slow start to lose the first, but the nightmare of last week's tin-fest haunted him. Every time he forced a weak shot from his opponent, he tensed up and dropped the ball a yard high for his opponent to slam away. Pushed him to set two in the third to no avail; 0-3.

Peter Cockburn got into a hitting match with their 2nd cioto'g at #3 but the student was the better hitter. Peter tried to mix a bit more variety into it but his B game didn't discomfit the guy enough ; 0-3.

Christy at #1 was in a game of 2 cioto'gs but his head was in petulant-land and he went out with a whimper against a guy that was playable. 0-3

Gerald faced a #2 in 4 games of great front court sabre rattling. Gerald won his fair share of those rallies, and topped them off with some trademark posturing, chest-puffing, eye-balling and general sledging. To his credit their guy picked up all the silky boasts and countered with silky drops to stuck with it through a few tight games. 1-3.

Peter Young came down to supervise the O'Brien Bucket and ended up playing at #5. Their #5 seemed stronger than their #4 but Peter put it up to the youngster and should have snuck one or two tight games. 0-3.

Overall 0-5, 1-18 on points.

Ok, just for you Richie Mac, the second team food was Franco's 12 inch pizzas, as usual 2 pepperoni, a mushroom, an onion and a surprise sweetcorn ' ham toppings. The students seemed shy about running up a large beer tab... but a few shouts of "Go on, Go on, ya will, ya will, ya will" had them running it up to £40 to live up to their reputation.

Firsts v Abercorn (Tue, Nov 4 '07)

Strange to see Abercorn first in Div 3, let alone propping up the bottom. Stokesy took out #5 Gary 3-0 and Christy beat #4 Bob Nicholson 3-0 in routine wins.

Ali G at #3 had a tremendously low error rate against Tom Neill in a match of punishing rallies; 3-0. Chris Mair beat #2 Alistair MacKenzie 3-1.

Match of the night was #1 Mike Perring v Brian Montgomery who plays some great angles and touch but was at the pin of his collar, it looked like it would be an early night with all the 3-0 but these guys started at 9pm and an hour later were still battling in the fifth; Mike was unlucky to lose out 2-3. Just as well we now have a bar extension until 11pm (if needed) on all home matches.

Overall 5-0, 19-4 on points. We still maintain second position in the league.

Ali G served up a sausage casserole which had the other 9 people asking for the recipe and seconds.