The main reason the “Winky-Dinks”
are now current kings of the mountain is not because of their stellar round 4
performance, but because of their make-up matches during the past week. They
gained a league’s best 28 points since round 3, leapfrogged “Space Geckos” to take the top spot and
have opened a sizeable lead to the teams ranked third and below. “Space Geckos” seemed to be a little
lost-in-space this week, as they picked up only 19 points since round 3 – equal
5th in the league. “Foss
Nation”, who were 9 points back the last play-off spot last week, are now
only 3 points behind with their league’s second best 22 points for the week.
Participation for round 4 was slightly better than last
week, but that is hardly saying much. Scores are way down for this half across
the board – all teams are guilty. Court usage overall is up (again!) so it’s difficult to pin point the issue. But rather
than harp on the past, let’s get motivated for the future and the next 5 rounds
to make amends! Every effort needs to
be made by everyone. Let’s get going
people!
It was tough for me last night to walk around much as
matches were being played to watch and enjoy the competition. Sometimes, it’s
awfully difficult to leave my office! I’m sure we had some great games – many of
them ended with a 2-1 score line – so I’ll highlight a few of them with the
perfectly reasonable presumption they are worth mentioning to begin with!
Jason Trombley (“The Nicker Ballers”) and Jon Walton (“Mongoose”) clearly played themselves to near total exhaustion.
Jason the 2-1 winner here and as his team name would suggest I’m sure he ended
the match on a screaming forehand volley smash into the nick. Todd Baker (“Space Geckos”) was brought to the brink by Steve Murphy (“Wardogs”)
but managed to survive The Judge’s fury and escape with a 2-1 victory. Niko Ahee (“Vivio’s”) made a rare appearance from behind the Subway Sandwich
Bar and fed up some winners to one of our better court scramblers Ian Edwards (“Nick at Night”) to take that result 2-1.
Next week – believe it or not – is over the half way mark of the season. It is also one day before the
best-weekend-of-squash-and-socializing you will ever have in the DAC Classic
and the perfect way to fine tune your game for the tournament. As I mentioned
above, we all need to make the effort to complete the matches. I can guarantee
that a team will miss out on the play-offs by less than 3 points because
somebody was too lazy to organize a match. Do let it be you!!