WINNING FORMULA

Mar 8 2008 by Sarah Bull, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

IT’S always the same . . . you wait ages for a bus and then two come along within minutes – and Brooks D have had a similar experience!

They hadn’t won a league or Concorde Handicap match all season, then suddenly they claimed back-to-back wins in the last two weeks of February.

Thanks to two brilliant performances by Callum Potter, they beat their own A team in the Concorde Handicap League by 23 points and Lockwood Con A by 12 points the week after.

This week’s match between Kingsmith Eng E and Marsh Con A was an absolute cracker.

With neither team having any realistic chance of qualifying for the semi-finals you might have expected a laissez fare attitude, but no!

It was an excellent battle with the result in the balance until the closing minutes.

Second Division Marsh A led until the penultimate set when Third Division Kingsmith E powered ahead with a great effort by Steve Cook who plundered 26 points from an out-of-touch John Schofield to give Kingsmith a 19-point lead.

This meant that Neil Dawson (+16) had to restrict Kingsley Smith (+26) to a total of 14 points for Marsh to win. It was a difficult task but possible because the previous week against Scissett B, 15 points adrift and conceding 20 points on handicap, he had pegged back Roger Horsley to nine points to tie the match at 350 each.

After two games all things were still possible, having kept Smith to eight points – a win, a loss or a draw.

Dawson, noted for his patience and determination, was outplayed and outmanoeuvred in a set lasting 31 minutes.

But Smith kept doggedly to his task and waited patiently for Dawson to make a mistake or produce one of his characteristic forehand blockbusters.

From 6-2 down in the third, with defeat still a possibility, Smith rallied to lose that game only 11-8, before going on to win the final game 11-7 which gave Kingsmith a 16-point (354-338) victory.

Kingsmith’s win, however, wasn’t just about Smith’s achievement against Dawson – that was the icing on the cake – it was about a great team effort, with Keith Knight leading the charge.

He dropped eight points to Dawson, despite winning the first game and receiving 11 points start.

But he made amends by taking 13 points from Schofield, and a further 12 from Adrian Normanton, to finish with +7, having dropped six to Normanton and 13 to Dawson.

Despite Dawson’s obvious disappointment in not being able to clinch victory for Marsh, he and everyone else had something to cheer about.

He had an overall gain of 24 points and was the most successful and only undefeated player from either team.

John Schofield had picked points from Smith in the first set of the evening, while Adrian Normanton had done likewise against Steve Cook.

Knight gained 17 points overall and started Kingsmith’s fightback in the seventh set by taking 12 points from Normanton.

Cook had then given Kingsmith the lead and as we have already said – Smith put the icing on the cake.