What a fantastic week we have just had at North Hants Golf Club in Fleet, Hampshire. This year's County Match Week proved to be one of the most exciting we have had for a long while. We were confident and we knew we had a good team and we knew we could win, it was just putting it into action. We had spent a lot of time during the winter on our foursomes play and met once or twice a month since Christmas at various clubs in Sussex. My grateful thanks to those clubs for allowing us to come and practice with you. It paid off! We spent a lot of time at Mid Sussex Golf Club under Neil Plimmer's guidance with informal instruction and we spent four days in Spain with very English weather conditions, practicing and getting to know each other even more. This paid off as well.
On the first Monday's match against Kent we came in with an 8/1 win, all 3 foursomes won and one single match lost - and from that moment on we knew we could do this! Tuesday's rain I thought would never stop - someone said 'rain before 7, fine by 11' - well forget that old wives tale, it went on until well after midday if not longer. Our afternoon singles was put off by 1 hour and tension was running high as we had to play our old adversories, Hampshire, and they were good! We lost 4/2 but it did not seem to dent our resolve to win the other two matches, one v Middlesex and the last v Surrey. Wednesday was our rest day and we went to Chessington Adventure Park. The Team (and Lil and myself and Jane, VC!) had great fun being children again for the day - the rain had stopped and the sun came out again and sunburn was the greatest threat!
Back to business on Thursday and when we met up with Middlesex - we did it again and won 8/1. We lost one foursome in the morning and won all six singles in the afternoon. Surrey had beaten Hampshire on the first day - and Hants had got 3 points on the board. Friday was their Rest Day and so we knew what we had to do - beat Surrey because if they won they would then have 3½ points and we would be 3rd, not first! We did beat Surrey 5/4. Elation had to wait as we needed confirmation from Mission Control back in the golf club that we had beaten Hampshire on a countback of games - yes again! (Shades of frustrating memories when we lost out to Hants at Caversham Heath in 2005 in the sub-divisional finals). A great swathe of yellow and pink persons found their way back to the Club House where we were told officially that we had done it - all the morning foursomes had to be discounted due to the rain on that Tuesday and so the countback was on all the singles matches - and yes, we had done it!! I think all the photos reflect this too.
I must make mention of 'Our Lil' - or more formally Lillian Cummins. She coaxed, bullied, cajoled, talked (a lot!) and also we laughed a lot - she was brilliant too and made it all very enjoyable to have her there as our Team Manager. (She is now on 50 a day! - joke!) Thanks to Judy Roberts, our President, for her cheerfulness and willingness to put right what I had forgotten.
I must thank all the supporters for coming along to see the team play during the week, it was really appreciated and to see all that yellow was enough to lift anyone's heart! Thanks too to Rita Furtado for organising our Trolley Puller's team for the week, we could not have done it without you! But lastly I must thank the Team for playing their socks off (yellow ones!) particularly Aileen Greenfield and Hannah Ralph as they never lost a match. I am so very proud of everyone of them and hope all of you out there are as well. They were awesome!
We are looking forward to going to Long Ashton in Gloucestershire, 15 - 19 September, and hope some of you may come along, in a coach perhaps, to support the Team then. We have the Team, we have the Supporters, all we have to do is just go out there and win again! |
Home
