Greenleys Warriors 5-5 Milton Keynes Topspin

Home skipper Ricky Taiwo summed up the match perfectly when he said at the end “a lot of unexpected results there”. More than half in my book. Ollie Horswell missed his first game of the season, well it was Halloween and there was trick and treating to be done, so Warriors fielded two division 2 players this time with Romuald Bacherel retaining his place and Jacob Midson coming in for Ollie. Pre match Ricky said he’d settle for a draw and, half way through, us Topspin boys said that we would too as things weren’t going so well.

Ricky and I had our usual pushathon to start the evening off which lasted 50 minutes and set the tone for the night. Ricky won in 4 games, which was followed by a 5 game victory for Romuald over Mervyn Kelly. But Russell was our hero tonight as he has saved his best form of the season for this top of the table clash. He exploded out of  the blocks with some magnificent hitting to beat Jacob. And with Warriors losing the doubles, as always, we were level at 2-2.

The match continued in similar vein with several close calls until we got to a 4-3 situation for the home side, at which point Romauld was sensational in wrapping up his own hat-trick when he thrashed the previously unbeaten Russell over 4 games to make the score 5-3. It was getting late by now and we played the final sets on adjacent tables. Both Mervyn and myself hadn’t won so far, but we came good at last as I beat Jacob and, with some judicious attacking prowess, Mervyn accounted for Ricky.

So a fair result, I think, in a match I reached the personal landmark of 2500 Milton Keynes League sets played (2346 in Premier & 154 in Div 1).