James is running a junior coaching session on Sunday mornings.
Red ball 9am – 10am
Orange ball 10am – 11am
Green ball 11am – 12pm
Yellow ball 12pm – 1pm
Red balls are 75% slower, roughly aimed at those aged 8 and under. Orange balls are slightly faster and green balls are for the stage before the normal yellow balls.
Club members £4 a session, non-members £6 a session
Sessions must be booked in advance because of the limitations on numbers. Please contact coachjames7@outlook.com.
A reminder of the timetable for arranging matches in the club tournament …
Starting date where formal rules apply 15th August
Round of 16 must be finished by Thursday 26th August
Quarter finals must be finished by Sunday 5th September
Semi finals must be finished by Thursday 16th September
Last year showed we need some formal rules when time is running out. If we enter those 10-day periods above and it has not been possible to find mutually convenient times for ties, then one of the players/pairs, the ones with the lower competitor number, will be tasked with offering at least two dates to the opposition. One of the dates must be on a weekend, one in the evening. Other dates may be offered in addition. The other player or pair must then accept one of these dates or withdraw.
The last match of the season was against Ivybridge. The original date was rained off. Ivybridge have an indoor option – provided the courts can be booked – and so a week later we managed to complete our season.
With one match to go it was very close at the top of division four. It was just possible for us to win. Or be second or third. Just before we played, our contact at Tavistock (perhaps with a hint of smugness, maybe), told us they had scored 67 points in their last match. Well, that meant we needed 70 points against Ivybridge. This was too much to expect.
We did win however, score 44 Ivybridge 50 Plymstock.
This one happened on the 14th July.
The team was again playing without our strongest player and so the result 48-46 is very credible.
At the time of writing, and with a rather out of date league table as our only guide, it looks like Hill Lane B are very likely to win the mens division four. Also, possibly, we might have a shot at being second. So it was a very impressive victory and continues the mens fine run of results.
The points tally was 56 for Plymstock and 42 for Hill Lane.
Friday was still hot and sunny in the evening. St Budeaux’s courts are arranged such that a setting summer sun is a problem at one end. This problem eventually went away because the matches lasted into the night. Fairly dark by the end at about 9:30pm.
All our matches lasted a while, partly because of long games and also tie breaks. In the number one pairing, first tie, Tim and Phil lost the first set, then took the second set to a tie breaker that they won, followed by a third set tie breaker that they also one. In the second pairing, Steve and Dave lost the first set, easily one the second, then eventually won the third set tie breaker.
As with ourselves, there wasn’t a lot of difference in standard between St Budeaux pairings, so the second matches were also close. Steve and Dave went to tie break twice, eventually winning both, possibly because of a better guessing where the ball was in the dark.
Tim and Phil had a slightly easier time of it second time. The end result was 67 points to Plymstock and 34 to St Budeaux. (Which is not what it says on the scorecard, but I’ve added it up again, and sent an email pointing out our mistake.)
This match was played on Wednesday 14th, rescheduled from the 5th.
On the most recent league table for division four, Tavistock C are third and Plymstock are 4th, out of six. So this one is part of a battle to be in the top half of the table. Tavistock won the encounter when we played them at home. Hence it was very satisfying to sneak a victory away.
The points were Tavistock 43, Plymstock 55.
The ladies played without Jess in the side for the first time. They totalled 16 points, which was not a bad achievement.
The tie was away to Hill Lane B on 2nd July
Great games with more deuces than I can remember – Jess
The points tally : Plymstock 59, Hill Lane 33