Firstly I would like to say thanks to Callum Todd and John Heppell for their service to Durham & Cleveland’s junior teams and hopefully they’ll soon progress into the Men's County team. Since I have been in charge both boys have played an instrumental role in my team and been a massive stronghold. They will be sadly missed, especially by all the lads that are going to be playing in Division 4 next year.
The boys started off the campaign with a short journey down to Hull, where the usual banter takes place and we started to scout the teams that we were going to play. Soon we realised that Shropshire, who we played first day, looked like they were going to be our main rivals for promotion. I made sure to get the boys to realise this and we had to start quickly. We had nine lads who all deserved a place to play on the first day; it was a tough choice for me and assistant captain Ben Smuk. The Man of the Match award on the first day goes to Matthew Telford, who started off on fire and won a very close Doubles match with John Heppell which secured the win on day 1, with wins also coming from Matt Hollingsworth and Luke Laws. Harry Cookson made his U18 Debut in Doubles and played very well to win at #2. Emotions were already running high with a big 6-3 win but on the other side Oxford and Avon were fighting a deciding doubles at 4-4, with Oxford picking up the win. I already felt that it was going to be a tough weekend and needed the lads to keep their focus for tomorrow, so we had a nice meal out at Pizza Express.
I felt a change in Singles needed to happen in the 2nd match as a few lads struggled and Avon’s line up looked stronger at the bottom than the top. Once again Ben and I got the lads in the right frame of mood and got off to a blistering start with a Singles sweep, which I have genuinely never seen from a D&C Warrior. Therefore we nearly made the mistake of thinking Oxford were going to win and thought about giving all the lads a game. We started to think of alternative Doubles pairings but as we looked over Shropshire, who went 3-0 down, came back to 3-3 after Singles and we waited just long enough to predict that actually they could sneak a 5-4 win. This would mean, even if we lost the 3rd day, we would need only a certain amount of rubbers to guarantee promotion or it would be a straight play-off against Oxford. We decided to go for the jugular and I told the boys of this possibility and that we want all three Doubles to win 9-0, which you don't often see in any sort of team matches. With a big ask, the boys were on fire and literally stormed to victory by winning all three matches comfortably. The Man of the Match award against Avon goes to Jake Thomas-Cattermole, coming off a defeat the first day and not playing his best tennis to find his game plan and win a tight match. As we looked on at the match we thought Shropshire would win, they started to lose comfortably and the other match looked lost at a set and 5-2 down but all of a sudden a change in momentum happened and they came back to win the 2nd set. Tiebreaks are generally a bit of a toss-up, with the team who holds their nerve winning. It was a weird atmosphere as everybody was watching with the D&C Warriors wanting Shropshire to win and Avon wanting Oxford to win to make it a straight shoot out. Otherwise it would look like we would nearly be crowned champions, only needing a minimum of three rubbers to become champions or Avon needing a 7-2 win against a solid Shropshire team with D&C winning as well to stand a chance. As it happened Shropshire won both matches and won 6-3, allowing D&C to only have to win two rubbers on the final day to become champions and get promoted in my 3rd year. We have stayed both previous seasons with one relegation play off and one promotion play off which they lost last year very closely.
The team was in high spirits and after some FIFA and food, Ben and I prepared the team for what I thought would be the quickest promotion final days in history. As it happened the lads got off to a very fast start and won the match after the Singles, so the Doubles line up was aimed at something to think about next year with a fresh crop of players coming in to show what they’ve got. Without realising, all the other three teams were in a relegation battle as Avon were beating Shropshire and we were beating Oxford badly so they needed as many rubbers as they could to try and get safe. As it happened, it came down to the last Doubles match on both courts and Oxford grabbed two rubbers which meant they were safe. Finally D&C were crowned champions, as we saw off two undisputed heroes from the U18 team into the Men's with a talented set of youngsters ready to push the Warriors into Group 3 next year. Was a great weekend and all the kids were well behaved! Two proud captains.
Thanks, Matt and Ben.