At home on Thursday, James Wighton (+1), Jay Jayalath (+3) and John Bald (+6) faced another Murrayfield side, Robert Carlyle (+7), Joey Kilbride (+3) and Porter De Farias (+5). James v Robert was first up with James giving his opponent a six point start to 11. The first two ends were shared and then ends 3 and 4 could have gone either way but it was James who came through in those ends 13-11, 11-9 to give the hosts the perfect start. John then played Joey and started with a 3-0 advantage which he was never to lose. Jay then gave the hosts a perfect start with a 3-1 victory over Porter. The hosts were coasting, or so it seemed. Losses for John v Robert and James v Porter, however, brought the match back into the balance. Jay v Joey was a straightforward 0-0 game and Jay restored the advantage for the home side with a comfortable 3 set win, but Murrayfield kept in the match as Porter defeated John. So, 4-3 as the last two matches were played simultaneously with time running out. Team Captain James said it was never in doubt as both he and Jay won in straight sets to give Penicuik a 6-3 win.
In the other half of the hall, Roscoe Cairney (+6), Rachel Petrie (+5) and Chamika Diyunugalge (+5) took on Corstorphine, Fergus Harrison (+5), Tommy Sutherland (+1) and Bill Batten (+7). Chami got the hosts off to a great start with a comfortable three set win against Fergus, but the match was levelled as the experienced Tommy came back from a 4 point deficit to beat Rachel in 4 ends. Roscoe then restored the lead with a 4 end victory against Bill before a crucial match between Rachel and Fergus. At 1-1 in the match end 3 went the distance – Rachel held her nerve for a 15-13 win. She looked down and out in the fourth at 6-3 down but remarkably from there she never lost another point as she recorded an 11-6 victory. That gave the hosts a 3-1 advantage and when Chami defeated Bill the match was there for the taking. Roscoe faced Tommy with a 5 point start in Match 6. The advice given to Roscoe was to go for his shots and he did that in spades! And they came off – a terrific 3-0 victory gave the home side the match by a 5-1 scoreline.
The final team to play on Thursday night was due to face another Murrayfield side, but just as we had struggled the previous night, Murrayfield couldn’t get two teams to us and so a 5-0 walkover win. A good week in the end with 3 of our four teams progressing to the next round.
And so, to our Player of the Week Award. It was a quiet week with only six players in action – of those six, Jay, Roscoe and Chami were undefeated. Whilst Roscoe’s win against Tommy was probably the best win of the night, he and Chami only played two games each – the man who predominantly got the other side through had 3 wins out of 3 and steadied the nerves with some good comeback victories – well done to Jay.
The Handicap Cup is normally good for throwing up some controversial moments but on the table it was a quiet night at Ladywood with everyone getting along and no issues at all. Off the table of course we had the ridiculous situation of having to concede a match to Murrayfield because only about a third of our registered players were available for the Handicap Cup. That match was effectively conceded at the weekend when it became apparent that there was no way we could secure 12 players for the week. Murrayfield have 59 players registered and they entered six teams into the Competition. They needed less than a third of their players to be available to fulfill their fixtures and couldn’t manage that either! It was Wednesday before our opponents confirmed they could only get one team to visit Ladywood on Thursday, not normally an issue but had we known earlier the three that effectively got a bye could have formed the team to visit Murrayfield on Wednesday evening. Oh well c’est la vie – one bye given to Murrayfield, and they returned the favour to us. Trying to reorganise would have been a nightmare.
Apart from that it was a quiet week – unless we make comment about some shenanigans that took place at the Scottish National League last weekend. All hell broke out there on Saturday at Bathgate when Divisions 1 to 3 were in action. There was no such drama on the Sunday when Divisions 4 to 6 took place, other than the normal youthful exuberance of certain youngsters! Cho Cho Cho Cho was again in action – so much so that the umpire on the adjacent table to where the “exuberance” was on show felt he should have interrupted the match to tell the youngster that he was putting the players off in the match he was umpiring. As we have said many a time, there is nothing wrong with showing delight / excitement / glee at good shots – when your opponent pushes one in the net though a shout of Cho is well and truly uncalled for.
But that paled into insignificance in relation to Saturday’s drama which involved the Tournament Referee having to be called to umpire a match which had a “nasty” element to it. We think the matter is still under investigation as the result of the match is yet to be recorded into the League Table / Results – on that basis we will not make any further comment and will no doubt be able to come back to this in a “quiet week” later in the season.
Week 6 is upon us and virtually 25% of the season completed already! It’s flying by!