The 14u County Cup qualifying for the Cornwall boy's team 2014 was held at the Lansdown Club in Bath.
The travelling team consisted of, at No1 Max Cameron-Webb, No2 Tadhg Maclean, No3 Freddie Stone and at No4 Thomas Bradley. The teams that we competed against were South Wales, Buckinghamshire and Wiltshire. The group was always going to be tough as on paper Cornwall were the underdogs. Every match each player would play in, would be against a player of at least one rating higher and in most cases two ratings.
The first 2 days certainly proved this as we lost on day one to Buckinghamshire 6-0 and then again on day two lost 6-0 to South Wales. In the case of both teams there No4 player was either higher rated than our No1 or the same. Both teams consisted of players that are ranked highly in the country.
Day 3 however proved to be a much closer affair as Tadhg managed to overcome an opponent that was two ratings above him in an impressive display of hard hitting and well constructed play. This left Cornwall with the knowledge that in order to gain victory against Wiltshire we would have to win both doubles matches to level the tie at 3-3. Tom Bradley and Freddie Stone managed to hold on to beat again higher rated players 11-9 in the third set match tie-break. This left Max and
Tadhg to team up and try to level it all up. Again playing higher rated players they managed to win the rubber 10-6 in the third set match tie-break. The tie left at 3-3 meant that one match tie break (first to 10) would be played. Both teams put out the players who had just been on court, so Max and Tadhg had a rematch and despite their best efforts and taking a slight lead early in the tiebreak didn't manage to pull off the win and lost 10-7, meaning Cornwall suffered an narrow but extremely well fought loss 4-3. this meant that Cornwall came 4th in the group, with South Wales coming out as overall winners and moving onto the main draw.