Phoenix 3 – 6 Mixed

Anne B & Simon T | Calvin B & Morag D | Aaron G & Cheryl S

The final match in an unusually successful season for the mixed team saw them away in Phoenix’s gravel bunker.  The home match in April had seen a narrow victory for Oakbrook, led by Tipue and Sarah, neither of whom were playing today.  Like today, captain Simon O was unavailable and Simon T took the reins for the night.

So without our captain and last-time’s star players, the team looked to the only regular mixed-team pairing, Anne and Simon, to lead them down the path of victory.  Despite the challenging nature of the courts, Simon claims always to play well at Phoenix, and today was no exception with a far higher percentage of shots in the court than usual and his crazy scrape-it-off-the-floor-backhand shot working a treat.  Anne’s excellent reactions and shot placement from the front, along with many winners off return of serve, helped them to their best performance this year.  They recorded the best figures from an Oakbrook mixed pairing, taking all three games in straight sets against a Phoenix opposition that weren’t quite on their best form.  Though having given Anne the scorecards, I can’t now remember exactly what those scores were.

Calvin and Morag were finding things a little tougher, with close games always just going the way of the opposition, the closest being a 17-21 loss in the third end.  The advantage of knowing your partner well was showing at times, with Phoenix’s regular pairings at times holding a tactical advantage over Calvin and Morag who were a little irregular in comparison as a partnership, despite many good individual shots.

Aaron and Cheryl therefore needed to put in a winning performance if we were to take the match.  Their powerful shots and quick movement gave them an edge over their opposition, and they were able to use this advantage to win their first two games.  With the match now won, they dallied a bit on the final game of the night, taking it to three games, and allowing the third end to turn into an epic.  Aaron was the ‘personification of calm and tranquility’* as he fought for the final few points, a 16-21, 21-19, 27-25 victory completing their three wins of the evening.

So overall a 6-3 victory for the mixed team.  Thanks to Morag, Cheryl and Aaron for stepping in to replace Joan, Sarah and Simon – not the first time our substitutes have proven pivotal to our victory.

Despite being beaten every single match for the last four seasons, Oakbrook’s mixed team have always felt they weren’t far short of the mixed division standard, and this has been proven this year.  Although still losing to the established mixed teams again, they have beaten the new teams to the division – New Embers and Phoenix – both home and away this year in close-fought games, to finish the season with statistics of Played 8, Won 4, Lost 4, For 31, Against 41.  That puts them mid-table, third out of five in the tiny five-team mixed league.  Hopefully more teams will want to join the mixed league as it is a shame for the mixed fans that the combined leagues are so much larger.

*this may be a lie

Many thanks to everyone who turned up to play in the tournament; it’s always a headache when there’s a “no show”. There were lots of tight matches with 5 of them going to 20-20 before being decided. There were also plenty of matches decided by 5 points or less so I hope everyone felt they’d has a good competitive night. The handicappers (Dawn & myself) are very pleased with themselves as everyone involved won at least 2 games. Congratulations to Joan for winning the tournament and also to Xophie and Dan who won prizes. You can see the final results by clicking this link.

Mixed 5 – 4 Phoenix

Joan H & Simon T | Sarah R & Tipue M A | Sue P & Calvin B

With captain Simon O on holiday, the honour of captaining Oakbrook’s least successful team in history passed to Simon T.  Although still rooted to the bottom of the Mixed league, Oakbrook have won their first ever game this season, and against Phoenix we were looking for our first win against a team that had actually brought three pairs with them.

Sarah and Tipue started very quickly, racing to a 21-12, 21-9 victory over their second pair, while Joan and Simon also came out winners of a close 21-17, 21-17 game against their first pair.  Sue and Calvin started well winning their first end 21-17, but ultimately came out the wrong way after a close three-setter.

So 2-1 up after the first games, it was looking to be as close a game as it always is when Oakbrook play Phoenix.  Sarah and Tipue were out to get the most from their match fee, and showed Joan and Simon what ‘close’ really meant, by coming out winners against their first pair 21-23, 24-22, 21-17.  Sue and Calvin made a respectable but unsuccessful score against their second pair with a number of interesting parrot-like squawks from Calvin as he saw the shuttle land just out of his reach one or two times too many.  Joan and Simon looked to have settled into winning ways with a straightforward two-set win against their third pair.

Now 4-2 up after the second round of games, we only needed one more victory to come out winners.  Sue and Calvin had the first shot, but against their first pair this was always going to be a challenge, and so it was, 16-21, 17-21 still being a good score to finish their evening.  Joan and Simon had won both their previous games in straight sets, and were up against the pair that Sarah and Tipue had already beaten to 12 and 9 earlier in the evening.  Confident of victory, they went into a 12-3 lead in the first game, after which something went a little wrong… whether it was tiredness, complacency, or a sudden burst of excellence and clever tactics from their opponents, no-one knew for sure, but the result was that although hanging onto that first game they lost the next two: 21-11, 21-23, 17-21 being the outcome.  With Joan and Simon slipping up, it fell to Sarah and Tipue to see us through to victory against their third pair.  So it was all looking to have ended badly when they lost the first game.  Perhaps sensing that it was coming down to them to decide the match, they improved from then on, and in the end made it look relatively easy, finishing 17-21, 21-14, 21-7.

A final score of 5-4, and a very rare win for the mixed team.  Simon puts it down to his excellent captaincy despite the fact his less-than-excellent playing at the end nearly cost them the match, and says that he will refuse ever to captain the mixed team again now in order to maintain his 100% winning record.  Many thanks to our substitutes, Tipue and Sue, for covering for Simon O and Anne.  That might even raise us off the bottom of the league for the first time in five years!

Mens Feathers 1 – 8 University Staff

Gavin B & Simon T | David W & John W | Calvin B & Nick F

Today’s excuse: John’s arm didn’t work.

In the last feathers match of the season, our three pairs had different fortunes.  Leading the way were Gavin and Simon, who put in a very good performance against their third pair, but still lost 18-21, 23-21, 13-21.  They went on from that to win their second game 21-19, 21-18, but their form dipped a little at the end and another tight three-set game again went the opposition’s way in their last game of the night.  But they can be happy enough to have got Oakbrook’s only game against the uni staff feathers team this year.

David and John’s evening was cut short after John’s arm decided it really was injured after all, and the pair had to pull out completely after losing their first game, thereby conceeding their others since we couldn’t convince left-handed John to play with his right hand like ‘normal’ people.  A disappointing end to a feathers season that hasn’t quite seen the pair match their success from last year.

Calvin and Nick, standing in for the missing Tipue and Simon O, had moments of “pretty good”, but also some “bad, verging on very bad” according to Calvin afterwards.  They found the uni staff pairs to be a little too strong, but still worked their way to double-figures most of the time, ending with 65-126 across their three games.  Thanks to both of them for stepping in to fill our vacancies.

We weren’t expecting a win, and weren’t necessarily expecting even to get a game at all, so avoiding a whitewash was pleasant.  Plenty of room for improvement next year though, since we remain second from bottom in the feathers league, ahead only of Abbeydale’s team of 12-year-olds.  As usual we’re not Oakbrook’s most successful team, but we give a good game most matches and do enjoy the chance to play with proper shuttles!

Today is the last day to enter the tournament. I’ll be collecting the sign-up list from the noticeboard tonight before I leave. If you would like to play and haven’t yet informed me of your intentions, now is the time; either add your name to the list or drop me a mail. There will be no club night on Friday as the tournament will be taking all the courts for the duration of the night. If you are playing in the tournament then please remember that it starts at 7pm so you’ll need to be there at that time.

Smashing.

David

Hello all,

Interserve phoned up at 1636 today to say that King Edward VII Lower School is now closed because of the snow.  The mixed match at Phoenix I believe is also cancelled, so there’s no badminton for us at all today 🙁