The Norfolk Mens 75+ season opened with a challenging fixture at Leeds against a strong Yorkshire team, which included the National 75+ Singles Champion John Andrews.
Both our pairs lost to this 1st pair. However against their 2nd pair, Jim Wiseman and Lyndon Barker won 12/10 in the Championship Tie-break. Also Roger Meadows and Mike Lake had another tight match closely fought in a good spirit, but losing 10/7 in the final set Tie-break.
The same team drove to Birmingham and got lost before reaching the tennis centre with 5 minutes to spare! Again both pairs lost to the opponents 1st pair, but levelled the match after both pairs beat their 2nd pair. Sets were also equal, but Warwickshire had won 41 games to our 39, so were the winners.
The 2 home matches on July 21st against Derbyshire, and 29th July against Nottinghamshire were both comfortable victories for Norfolk by 4 rubbers to nil. Notts put up the greater resistance with good competitive tennis for 3 and a half hours. Tony Edelsten replaced Jim, and then Mike in the home matches.
The season was a success in that matches were a good standard, and keenly fought. We missed out by losing so closely against Warwickshire, as we might well have gained promotion.
Stuart Silvester