With the Division 1 title already decided in favour of Northlands, who still have one game to play, the fight was on this week for the runners up spot, and third and fourth places.
Favourites for second place are Brand Identity who did themselves no harm at all beating Hadleigh Forum 8-1. The brothers Jacob, David and Simon, together with Steve Muth, were rarely troubled on the night winning six matches without dropping a set, the only hiccup coming when Paul Fawell defeated Steve Muth in five sets.
Invicta completed their season with a 6-3 away win at Hockley but it wasn’t quite enough for them to catch Brand Identity, currently third, so they settle for fourth place. The match wasn’t easy for Invicta but they started well winning the first three games and benefited greatly from the return of Steve Marr, playing only his second summer league game, but he won both his singles and took the POTM award. Joseph Odegbami got Hockley’s only singles win beating Tony Ayliffe and also went to five sets against Marr. Their other successes came in the doubles Stuart Adshead and Harry Sawford beating Marr and Lee Marson in five sets, and Odegbami and Sawford beating Ayliffe and Marson also in five sets. Marson also picked up two singles wins and Ayliffe got his point beating Adshead in straight sets.
Hadleigh Forum were back at the table for a second time this week taking on bottom of the table Canvey and this time coming out on top winning 6-3. Fellow DRS Dave Woolmer got the POTM award but he and team mates Colin Barham and Anton Ranjit-Singh all won their singles with the doubles matches proving to be their Achilles heel. Doubles matches have proved to be quite a leveller in this division and what was remarkable about Canvey’s performance was that all three matches went to five sets, and they were behind in all three, twice coming back from two sets down and once from 2-1. Closest of these three was probably Des Duffield and Lee Mcgonagle’s win against Woolmer and Barham 11/7 11/5 13/15 12/14 9/11.
Stanford edged out RESSC 5-4 thanks to two singles wins each from Pete Weatherall and Rob Salvage and a doubles win from Weatherall and Mark Downey. Ron Coutts and John Tendler picked up a point each for RESSC and the doubles provided two more with wins from Tendler and Bob Skews and Skews again with Coutts.
