In the final round of matches in Division 2 of the Southend Summer League the champions, Canvey ‘A’, showed no signs of easing up.  A crushing  9/0 victory over Invicta ‘B’ saw them end the season in style.  The experienced threesome of Peter Cray, Trevor Hayes and Terry Giddens proved to be too good on the night for their opponents, and the match was wrapped up with the loss of just 3 sets.

Runners-up, Stanford ‘B’, were 7/2 winners away at Runnymede.  Mike Trendell was the player of the match for Stanford, with Runnymede’s points both going to the experienced Tony Millward.

There was a close fought contest between the ‘C’ teams of Stanford and Basildon with Stanford emerging as 5/4 winners.  Martin Winter was unbeaten in singles for Stanford, but Basildon’s Michael Elemide was the POTM, unbeaten in both singles and doubles.

Chong Shing Lam led the way for Canvey ‘B’ in their 7/2 win over Matchpoint ‘C’.  A fine performance saw him win both his singles and doubles.  For Matchpoint, there were singles wins for David McHattie and Lenny Raymond.

The three doubles games saved the blushes of Hadleigh ‘B’ when they took on the talented youngsters of Evolve.  Hadleigh came out on top in all of these, but a solitary singles win for Colin Barham was their only other reward on the night.  Miles Bygrave and Sasha Syderenko, with two singles wins each and a single win for Ehsan Khan were the Evolve points winners.

To end the season, there were two rearranged matches, both ‘local derbies’.

In the first, Stanford ‘B’ were 6/3 winners over the ‘C’ team.  Another POTM performance from Mike Trendell here, with good contributions from teammates John Handscombe and Pat White.  For the ‘C’ team, Vaughan Chambers got the better of John and there was a good win for Mark Downey over Pat.  Vaughan and Randy Santiago combined to take the final doubles.

In the Hockley ‘derby’, the ‘D’ team were staring down the barrel of a whitewash until Perry Lazell and Ben Brown got together in the final doubles.  In a hard fought encounter, they finally got the better of Amar Al-Soufi and Richard Kidd, taking the final set 11/9 and sparing the blushes of their team.  Ross Collins was unbeaten on the night for Hockley ‘C’ and took the POTM honours.

So congratulations to our deserved champions, Canvey ‘A, who finished the season with a perfect 11/11 win record.

Stanford ‘B’ mounted a valiant challenge throughout, but their only defeat, to Canvey ‘A’, proved to be decisive and meant they finished as runners-up.

At the other end of the table, Canvey ‘B’ and Hockley ‘D’ finished level on 21 points, with Canvey avoiding the wooden spoon by virtue of having won one more match than Hockley.

Individually, Miles Bygrave (Evolve), Terry Giddens (Canvey ‘A’) and Dave Woolmer (Hadleigh ‘B’)  topped the averages with a 10/10 win record.