Brunswick C 9 -0 Oakbrook

Gavin B & Simon T | Tipue M A & Aamir K | Tom M & David W

Our final feathers match was rather a disappointment, and an anticlimax at the end of our season.  Not so much for the fact that we lost 9-0 (we’ve been on the wrong end of that scoreline a couple of times every season, and are quite used to it by now!) but more for the lack of enjoyable badminton played.  This was due to the exceptionally slow speed of the shuttles at Brunswick – which caused all our players problems throughout the evening.  The one upside was that their fastest smashes which we’d struggled to return in the last match were now much more easily returnable.  But the downsides were that we failed to get any penetration from our own smashes, our lifts kept falling a long way short of the back line, but most significantly we mis-timed huge numbers of shots, often having finished playing the shot before the shuttle turned up.  This all led to a lot of mistakes and shorter, less fulfilling rallies than we’d enjoyed against them at home a week before.

Brunswick’s players seemed happy enough with the slow speed, and due to being used to it were not finding timing problems.  All the games went the same way – comfortable wins for Brunswick while Oakbrook players took all evening to get used to the shuttles, with all three Oakbrook pairs’ scores getting a little better each rubber as they grew more accustomed to them.  We’d have needed another three games each to be more comfortable, and even then we’d have not come close to winning as Brunswick are undoubtedly a better side.  But we might at least have found it a little more fun in defeat.

By the end of the evening, Tom & David and Tipue & Aamir had identical scores of 74-126, with Gavin & Simon faring a little better less badly, taking their final game to three ends and finishing with 119-142.  Thanks to Tom and David for putting in a solid performance for us as stand-ins for Aaron and Glen.

Thanks also to all the main team (Gavin, Aamir, Tipue, Glen and Aaron) for their play over the whole of this year and of course our huge collection of substitutes too numerous to name – maintaining things over the course of the season while always getting out a team for the matches being definitely a club-wide-effort at times!

According to the current league table, while Brunswick and Rawmarsh take the two promotion spots and fight between themselves for 1st and 2nd, Oakbrook’s team have won half of their matches, lie third, and can’t be caught by those below – so actually in the top half of the league table – a rare achievement for our team!  Congratulations to all involved.