POPPs (Peter, John Taylor and Terry) faced up to the Evergreens (Mick, Dave and Mark) in confident but deluded mood. To cut to the chase, POPPs lost 9 sets to nil. We had our moments, some good rallies where a passing observer may have briefly assumed a hard fought close match was in progress, and even a few games were won. John took a game off Mark, 11-8. Terry took Mick to 5 games winning 2 of them 11-5 and 13-11. Peter took 2 games from Mark winning them 11-9 and 11-5. John took 2 games from Mick, 11-8 and 11-5. And Peter took 1 game from Dave, 11-8 . Altogether we won 8 games but no sets. 4 of our losing games went to 1 all. But it is hard to pretend we were in with much of a chance. We sometimes come away from a losing match thinking that, all in all, the opposing team were not really that  much better than us and next time it could be different.  I don’t think any of us thought this would be the case with the Evergreens who always seemed to have a couple of extra gears when they needed them.