Wednesday 28 November 2007

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?

Friday 23 November 2007

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.

Tuesday 20 November 2007

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)

Monday 19 November 2007

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!

Saturday 17 November 2007

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.

Friday 16 November 2007

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.

Thursday 8 November 2007

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.

Wednesday 7 November 2007

Seconds vs Colinton / Musselburgh 6th November.

A good chance of improving on our recent run of bad results with Gerald at No 1. An improvement there was but still not enough to register our second win of the season.

Dougie Brown started the festivities off at No4 vs Hamish Williamson. Dougie's definitely back after his long injury layoff and looked very comfortable in polishing off the very capable Hamish in three. 3-0.

Pete Tweedie started off similarly comfortably with an easy fisrt game win against the deceptively laid-back style of John Stohlner. That was the end of the good news though as it just seemed to all go wrong for Petey. An infeasibly large number of rallies ended with Pete putting the ball square onto the red line of the tin....so many that Pete had to be restrained from demanding that the courts be measured against legal requirements. had the red line been three inches lower Pete would have easily completed a 3-0 thrashing.....but a 1-3 loss was the result.

Mark Dutton on next against the hard-hitting Derek Wilson at No3. Always going to be tougth and so it proved. Two fairly even games went the wrong way bu a few points mostly through a failure to find width being repeatedly punished by sharp volleys. Game three was exactly the reverse and an easy win. Game 4 began with some vigorous discussion between players and umpire re interpretation of the rules of fair view and freedom of passage to the ball..(well OK...just me) but to no avail and the early psychological damage was never recovered from....1-3.

Poor Pete Cockburn walked on the court at No 2 vs Richard Easton with a warning from the rest of the team that he'd "have his hands full". If only it were that successful. Not a pretty scorecard at all with the normally extremely skilled Richard being even more devastating than normal. I won;t embarrass Pete by revealing score details other then the overall 0-3. Pete's post-match query...."Did I just play the best player in the world?"

What can was say about the Gerald vs Colin Grant match at No 1? Anybody who's ever seen these two play before would pay money for the privilege and so it proved again. An incredible display of speed, skill, touch and ...oh...other stuff...can't think of good enough words. The final result was an 8-9 loss in the fifth game (after an earlier Grange match point). Not convinced of the wisdom of the "set one" call at match point, but other than that I don't think Gerald could have done much more. Superb stuff.

Overall result...a 7-15 loss.

Tuesday 6 November 2007

Seconds vs Bank Of Scotland 1st November

The most notable event of the night was the total absence of a Bank of Scotland team at Marcos where all five Grange 2 folk had gathered at the intsruction ofChristy's email of the week before. A few phone calls later we decamped to Colinton where BoS now play (a team of gypsies if ever ythere was one ...second time they've changed homes). None of us had noticed the change of team home, Christy included.

That drama aside, we had another week of being just one notch out of touch with a superior side. Everybody playing very well as they have been doing every week and mixing it with very decent opponents but nobody coming up with the win.

Doug Brown started the night off and was doing little wrong other than choosing an opponent in Ian Finaly who was doing even less wrong. A scoreline of 1-9, 1-9 looked most un-Doug like but was a fair reflection at that stage. He very nearly nabbed the third but not quite and a 0-3 loss.

Pete Young's story was similar. He had the measure of John Burnett by the third game. Lots of points scored but sadly not enough in any single game. 0-3.

Pete Tweedie provided the backbone of the night for us against Aussie Mark Tucker. They shared games and then ended up with a very tight 5th game with Mark just edging. So close but no coconut. 2-3.

Pete Cockburn is looking more and more comfortable at no 1 every week and will surely begin to pick up wins soon. He was a match for Robin Nisbet but eventually experience told and a 1-3 scoreline resulted.

Mark Dutton was up against a very tough proposition at no 2 in Rob Norris. Like the others, good quality squash but slightly better quality opposition. A game point in the third showed what might have been but 0-3 a fair result. (Although the 0-8 ratio of turned down service cut queries posed to the referee wasn't quite such a reflection of the true position ...... mebbe).

All in all....we need to turn our quality squash into results starting this week.....in danger of losing touch very early in the season....

Mark D.