AC Interclub Match: Sussex County v East Dorset

After no ascertainable history of ever playing each other in the AC Inter-club competition, Sussex County were this year drawn against East Dorset Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club for the second year in succession. Once again, it was a close match, but we managed to avenge our 4-3 loss last year with an equally tight 4-3 win this year.

In the morning, Dom Nunns and Gabrielle Higgins never got so much as a sniff at hoop 1, losing 26tp to Jeff Dawson and David Fuller. Meanwhile Paul Castell nearly polished off Steve Leonard +24 but missed his peg out, and Steve made 5 more hoops before Paul managed to hit back in and peg out his remaining ball. Tudor Jenkins came agonisingly close to completing a quadruple peel, failing rover with all peels done, but managed to hit back in on the next turn to complete the game and leave SCCC 2-1 at lunch.

In the afternoon, Jonathan Powe made short work of Paul Castell to level the scores. Gabrielle got off to a good start against Jeff, but had more difficulty with her second ball and ended up on peg with no peels done. Jeff hit the lift and pegged her off, but Gabrielle hit back in and completed an adventurous 2 ball break to put SCCC in the lead again with 3-2. The other two games had plenty of interactivity, but Tudor squeaked a close victory over Steve +3 to secure the match. Dom was also pegged out by David, who with his own partner on 4b and Dom still on 4 had two balls off, which was duly a winning tactic.

All in all, a better result than the joke of the early posed photo might have suggested.

Many thanks to East Dorset LT&CC for their excellent hospitality.

Thanks to Gabrielle Higgins for report and photo