In keeping with tradition for summer league matches Popps lost to their opponents 2 sets to 8. There were five aspects to this defeat – it was very hot, the combined ages of Lions was probably about 135 years less than the Popps team of David, John and Terry, youngsters don’t respect their elders these days, Terry was playing again after a 3 week break, and they were better than us. In fact, on reflection, we did remarkably well.
The two wins were David and John beating Hannah. Terry got close, by his standards, losing the first two games 10-12 but collapsed somewhat in the third 7-ll once Hannah had learnt to ignore his gurning and simulated heart attacks. Other notable successes where that all of us took the third game off their number one player Josh although against John and Terry he went on the win the fourth and final games fairly comfortably. David took him to five games before losing in a very good close match. David also took Ben to five games and was undoubtedly our best player
You can often tell what coaching a team gets from its style of play. Lions clearly have a specialist ‘pushing’ coach. Most rallies were won by out-pushing us and displaying patience. The all had good attacking shots as well but tended to use them sparingly and only when a clear chance had been achieved. When they went for badly judged winners they were just as likely as us to miss. It’s just that we did it far more often. Even when we had succeeded in setting up a good attacking opportunity to attack our conversion rate was less than theirs and many points went begging for the lack of a few millimetres of table. However, I don’t see this as a reason for ignoring attacking chances. This would just lead to negativity and a one dimensional strategy. What we need to do is to improve our technique on the attacking shots and this needs coaching, practice and playing them in matches when the opportunities arise. We all played very good winners at times but probably only converted about 20% or our chances. Just raising this to 40% and reducing the number of ‘no hoper’ smashes would transform our prospects.
As there were only 9 matches,the score of 2-8 is an interesting one. Perhaps it reflects an extra match played by our reporter in his mind as he struggled to force some oxygen into his exhausted frame.
I think we need some clarification on terminology re: sets, games and matches. I thought a game was the best of 5 sets. Is a game the same as a match? can you a light a fire by striking one? Clearly we need some help here as we do with our tt.
I am sure Alan will be very pleased to be described as a pushing coach and will probably have to return to Devon for another holiday to calm himself.
Yes, we lost 2 – 7. This is of course a better result than I recorded in the report. Well done us! Terminology: A match is between 2 teams of 3 players and everyone plays everyone else (on the opposing team of course). A match is therefore made up of 9 sets and each set consists of the best of 5 games. I think this is correct but we can check with John or Alan. If Alan is their main coach I shall ask him for pushing lessons to supplement the smashing everything in sight and missing the table lessons I am getting at the moment.