Mens 2 faced a very tricky proposition in the Sheffield
Badminton Club of the Year’s final outing of the season – we had to play the
unbeaten league champions away from home with virtually the whole team
declaring themselves unavailable to play whether it be due to being overseas,
kids, working, moving away or lack of registration! A humiliating void match
was nearly on the cards unless we could get 2 pairs together.
Fortunately with a couple of late additions Clive, Mick,
Matt and Rob fronted up for Ranmoor and were paired Mick with Rob and Matt with
Clive. A hearty thank you to these four guys for playing, it is a good
experience against tough opposition and will serve especially our two younger
guys really well for the future.
The visitors had two missing from what we think is their
best team and they made a couple of shuffles, with Andy moving up to pair 1 to
play with young James instead of the young Felliani lookalike. Mark, probably
their best player in our home match, played with the player moving into the
team.
The 9-0 defeat would have been highly likely even with our
best team out, but our guys acquitted themselves really well with no score less
than 7 and several in the teens. After we won 5 ends in our home game against
Wisewood, we can have a lot of confidence that all the squad can win points in
this division next season, which will be even harder than this year.
Man of the Match will be held back for this one, so as to
give no clues as to the identity of the Mens 2 Player of the Year, to be
awarded at Captain’s Night on July 6th. As I write Nathan will be
sweating as he sits in the Barcelona Grand Prix, mainly from the sun, but also
wondering if Clive has overtaken him statistically. We shall see!
Thanks to all the team for their efforts this season, with all members of the squad playing at least 2 games at this new level. That was important development that will allow us to identify the best six players for the key games next season, but also have others experienced enough to fill in when called upon. With Venturers (a Division 1 team in disguise) coming up, along with Abbeydale who we know can bring others in if they are in danger of going down, next season will be the tough one!