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.

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.

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.

Firsts home v Deerpark 2 (Tue, Oct 30, '07)

The West Lothian team turned up with just 4, not having the courtesy to phone us when they knew the day before that they would be short. As a result, one of our team had a wasted evening - their captain got a lesson on where to find the team contacts on the ESSA website for his pains.

Gerald at #3 gave Malcolm Lochrie plenty of Welsh-isms between points, was cruising 2-0 up and made a meal of the third but managed to win it 10/9. Alan Stokes played Sandra Wilkes at #4 and stayed in control on a hot court 3 to take it 3-0. Mike Perring for the second week running had no legs, still enough touch and power to take a routine win over Milan Govan at #1.

Ali G at #2 took a game to get in his stride (i.e. he lost the first) against John Miller, this was the most contested match of the night. Alastair was cracking the ball well and reaching everything in the long rallies and John was not going to an easy defeat but it was still 9-3,9-3,9-3 to Ali in the next 3 games.

Overall 5-0, 20-3 incl ref bonus points. Man of the match: Ali G came thru in a good fight.

Food report: Mike served up a very tasty Spag Bol with garlic bread which satisfied everyone.

Bragging rights for the first mini-leagues of 2007

The mini-leagues are now available on-line. Click on the... Nov 2007 league

Click the previous... Oct 2007 league RESULTS so that you can see why you got promoted or demoted or eliminated (if you never saw the final totals on the noticeboard.)

Note that all phone/email info has been removed, for your protection. Please consult your Email/noticeboard for this info. Congrats to Dougie Brown for a great running start to his mini-league stewardship.

Peter Roberts is mini-leaguer of the month after dropping only 1 point out of a possible 32 in a very competitive league.

Nick Lyth was a worthy runner-up in the very competitive division of the month, Div 11, with Menzies, McLaren, Edward and Marshall also getting into double figures points totals and 100% matches played with a maximum total of 100 points!

In the premier leagues, Allan Hamer consolidated his position as Club #1,, with current club champion Mike Perring and Chris Mair tied for the second spot. Click here to see... where you are ranked in the club (from mini-league head-to-head results). Get on the club ladder by working your way up to the top 5 mini-league divisions. And perhaps get yourself called up for a team match.

Seconds home v Royal Bank (Thurs, Oct 26)

First up was super-sub Peter Menzies, fresh from a summer of improvement on the coaching course. His own verdict: "I was playing sh*te, mate" in which case we need to move him up the team order 'cos he won 9-5,9-4,9-2 and would have hockeyed the guy if he'd been playing well!

Tim Hannay came in as super-sub at #4 and went 6-9, 3-9 down but got to 8-4 game ball in the third, unluckily he could not convert the two service rallies he got and the merchant banker beat him 10-8 in that one too. Still, he can take consolation from his share of Menzies 3 points through him playing at #4.

Dougie at #3 was, by his own admission, slotting everything to granny the guy in the first, get to 7-7 and push thru for the win in both other games, like the thoroughbred racket man that he is.

Peter Cockburn took on Eric Donohoe at #1. Stokesy commented while spectating that was that Peter was playing well but Eric was playing uber-high standard. One rally apparently went on for about 30 shots with Peter dominant throughout and Eric running court lengths like the greyhound he is, Peter looking up at the balcony mid-rally "what do I have to do to put this guy away" written on his face as Eric runs down yet another distant shot, at the end of the rally Eric takes a swing and puts it away. The balcony draws its breath.

Mark Dutton at #2 played Stephen who was hitting a terrific clean ball. One little vignette: Stephen ends up stranded in the front corner, Mark on the T with an open court but can only volley back to Stephen's corner, he does but calls "Let please!" at the same time, then the ball rolls out of the nick! Cue the balcony holds it's breath. Again. Mark is there arguing why he should get a let, Stephen says "No, its either your winner or a stroke to you" and Dougie the ref has to persuade Mark to accept the winner when Mark thought he was struggling to get a let. The balcony lets out a collective sigh of relief. We need a camera on Mark at all times - these funny incidents always happen with him and there is a whole YouTube.com audience out there waiting for this stuff.

Man of the Match: Peter Menzies on his debut

Overall a 2-3 (6-12 points) loss, thanks to Cockburn and the super-subs for helping out in my hour of need.