Sumer County Cup Mens Division 3
Report
This year's county cup started four weeks before we all made our own way to the lovely sea side town of Hunstanton. Previous to the week long event some of the more senior players in the team knew what we were up against this year: .three Scottish teams, Warwickshire and Berkshire. It was going to be tough.
The 9 top players who made it through selection were:
Me (Daniel Macshane, Captain), Callum Chivers, Josh Bexon, Chris Wood, James Defusto, Phil Peters, Kyle Collins, Jamie Drummond and Dave Barton.
Sadly this year three players could not make every day due to work commitments, but fortunately we still had enough players to put out a full team each day.
Day 1:
Started off with a slightly controversial prep talk from myself, suggesting that we would have to fight for every point, game and match regardless of the overall score, as the overall score may not always reflect our level of commitment and passion. It was something along those lines anyway.
We played West of Scotland. Score: 2-7. Everyone fought hard, but sadly we just didn’t have the depth in field.
Day 2:
With a slight change in pairings to see if we could strengthen the team, sadly it didn’t have the effect we would have liked. It didn’t help that one of our players chose to leave early, so we didn’t play the last round because we could not win the day.
Day 3:
The last day of Scotland's domination of division 3, and two days in. we hadn’t made the impact we would have liked, but the spirits of the team were high, bodies feeling surprisingly good. Dave Barton also entered the team today and delivered exactly what an experienced player like him can. Excellent job all round, sadly score didn’t reflect our efforts, again.
Day 4:
Surprisingly at this point in the week I found myself in conversation with Dave Barton about the level of the other teams and how I didn’t feel like they were as good as I expected and that we still had a chance of staying in the division if we could pull out a win today. But once again with the same score line that haunted us for the last three days against the Scots, that dream faded away.
Day 5:
Last day of the week…….for us everything had already been decided, we were going back down to Div 4. For the rest of the teams there were a few places up for grabs. We didn’t let this persuade us either way, and we just knuckled down and did what we had to do. At 1-5 down all had been decided and the day came to a close early.
Overall it was a very frustrating week especially as my first year stepping in as captain, and also knowing that we had done so well getting up into Div 4 last year. Unfortunately we were missing a few key players and that made all the difference. 99% of us truly put 110% in every day, on and off the court. The team spirit was something to be proud of. A new year next year an all the younger players will have another year's experience behind them. This will definitely help us get back into Div 3 where we can be a very competitive team, hold our own and push for an amazing Div 2 status.