Having surprisingly lost their first team match of the season to their sibling B side, Penrith Squash A team were in no mood to repeat the experience.
To be fair, in their first encounter, rankings had still to be sorted, and new club member, Chris Stephenson, whose squash standard was unknown, playing at 1 for the B team, beat A team number one, 3 games to 1. Also going against ‘form’, Richard Utting lost to Paul Matthewman, Richard Lee lost to 16-year-old Harry Ewbank, and only Alex McIntosh, managed a win for the A team, beating up-and-coming Dan Cook.
After the first match of the season, proper rankings were quickly established and a repeat shock loss for the A team was going to be impossible. Both teams fielded their best possible sides. First on, Digger Gray played Chris Lilley, and easily won 3-0. Richard Utting suffered a similar defeat against new ‘boy’ Chris Stephenson (playing at 1), losing 3-0, but Richard played some of his best squash in recent months. At 3, new club player Garry Hobson, managed to take a game off Ben Hoyle, finally losing 3-1. Playing the fourth string, Alex McIntosh had a repeat match against Dan Cook, whose squash has improved greatly in the last few months. Their match was fast and long, with neither having the ability to find many winners. At 2-1 up, Alex failed to take a match point, with Dan winning the 4th game 17-15. The fifth game could have gone either way, and went down to the wire, with Dan finally winning 15-13.
So, the A team were denied maximum points (15 out of 16 for their win) with the B team picking up a useful 4 points.