Monday night saw Popps first match of the summer league, against Spartans. This, we are told, is a rather more relaxed and sociable affair compared with the cut and thrust and naked ambition of the winter league. Our team was made up of two of our stars. John and Peter, and Terry playing his first competitive match since January.

Peter got us off to a flying start beating Scott 3 games to one, 11-6, 11-6, 4-11, 11-9. It was a good game with Peter’s consistent defensive style, springled with the occasional attacking shot winning through despite a flurry of aggressive play form Scott winning the 3rd game quite comfortably.

However, reality kicked in with Terry being beaten comfortabley by Steve 5-11, 4-11 and 7-11. Lack of match practice, in fact any sort of practice, was evident in Terry’s liberal spraying of the ball all around the table but rarely on it. Things could only get better, hopefully.

John nearly got us back into the match but just failed going down in a 5 game set, 11-9, 6-11, 4-11, 11-9 losing the 5th game 12-14. This was a long debilitating set on a very warm night and John was suffering badly from the heat at the end of the set so did very well to come back from 1 -2 down to get so close. Terry’s next match got us back on scedule by losing in 3 straight games again but showed signs of improvement by losing the first game to Scott 10-12, but then losing the next two 4-11, 7-11.

Peter struggled in his next set against Mick losing in 5 games, 10-12, 11-3, 11-8, 3-11, 7-11. Mick also had a mainly defensive game that proved to be a bit more reliable than Peter’s.A pattern was emerging with Popps losing all the close games from 10-10. This was followed by yet another 5 game set Popps lost with John losing to Steve 11-8, 6-11, 12-14, 11-7, 8-11.

Terry then played his last set against Steve and at last seemed to get back to something close to his pre-christmas form, but still losing 2 games to 3, 9-11, 12-10, 11-9, 9-11, 12-14. This was another long hot game that needed a little mor eluck at the end to pull of a win.

We had already lost the match now with Spartans having already won 6 of the 9 sets. However, John manged to beat Scott quite easily in 3 straight games, 11-1, 12-10, 11-9 with Scott recovering well from and error strewn start. Hwever, despite his over-heating, John kept his focus to round off his evening’s campaign with a flourish. The last set, Peter against Steve, saw Spartans get the final win, 11-2, 8-11, 10-12, 7-11, finally beating us by 7 sets to 2.

All in all not too bad but we lost 6 of the 7 games that went to 10-10 and all 4 sets that went to 5 games. This rather suggest with a bit more consistency, patience (or luck) we could have done better.