Tuesday 6th July 2101. POPPs B Terry W, Dennis and Tom:  Evergreens Mick, Dave and Michael

I was somewhat surprised to learn that it is not only POPPs members who read this blog!  My advice to our other readers is ‘get a life’. There must be something you could be doing that is more worthwhile than reading this. In any case,  there is  no guarantee that anything reported here is accurate. Consider this to be a disclaimer. On the other hand, if you do read any of these reports, please leave a comment and say hello!

It is traditional to end these reports with a statement to the effect that the match was played in excellent spirit. Just for a change I thought I’d begin with this. So, as usual, the match was played in excellent spirit. There was a good deal of badinage and laughter (mainly them laughing at us it must be said).   As usual, POPPs B got a bit of a hammering.

It was hard to tell which was the best Evergreen player. Michael was the most unorthodox, playing almost anything that came to him with a backhand, and he won all of his 3 games to nil. Terry took him close a couple of times getting to 4, 8 and 9 but Michael’s effective all purpose backhand push/drive/smash kept catching him out. Michael even contrived to play this when the ball was clearly on his forehand side! And, despite it being very warm, he kept his rather fetching 1950s jumper on all night. Dave and Mick were much more orthodox and both had effective forehand and backhand top spin drives and pretty good smashes when the opportunity presented itself. David had a rather nautical air about him with a blue top and a submarine commander’s beard. He certainly torpedoed us and we went down with all hands. Which rather reminds me of a Wren I used to know. As far as we could tell, Mick was quite normal. Which is more than can be said for the POPPs trio.

Both Dennis and Terry managed to get a game off Mick, 11-7 and 11-9 respectively. These were our only successes of the night. Terry got close in the 4th game losing 11-13 and so failing to take the set into a deciding 5th game. The only trouble Mick seemed to have was when Terry’s forehand drives and occasional smashes, despite appearing to be aimed cross court, went down his backhand side of the table leaving him  somewhat stranded. Not all of these were miss-hits. On the other hand Terry had more difficulty than the other POPPs players in getting Mick’s serves back – a good variety of top and backspin with a bit of side thrown in now and then. The fact that he almost disappeared below the table when winding himself up for a backspin serve didn’t help. Dave, like Michael, won all his sets to 3 nil with none of the POPPS players getting closer than 9. Dave had a good all-round game and was quite happy standing back from the table and driving everything back waiting for the inevitable mistake.

It is evident from patches in  Tom’s  and Dennis’  sets that they are both good players recently returned to the game and gradually getting back into it. Dennis impressed with his speed and reactions round the table leaping about like a jack-in-the-box and often hitting winners (and near misses) in full flight with both feet off the ground. As we all agreed as we packed up to go home, all we need is a few years more experience and things can only get better. Pity the combined age of the team is about 220 years!