Knole 2’s have had a typical start to their summer campaign. With injuries, holidays and the occasional call-up to the first team, the brave KP2 boys are languishing near the bottom of North West Kent Division 5.
Last week, we had the rare privilege of a visitor from the 1st team (David Falconer) - and managed to snatch our first win of the season – a 3-2 win over Bexley 5th. Solid 3-0 wins for David and Peter Brightwell, left occasional player/manager John Creek with the task of bringing home the win. After going 2-0 down to Selina Dagger, John managed to claw back the next 3 games and register valuable points and a win bonus for the team.
This week it was back down to earth though. Park Langley 5th have the luxury of a large squad of players to call on, and are able to field their injured captain Malcolm at 5th string without having to ask him to win. Mark Fleming struggled at 1 against a fit Sam Wilkinson. Gareth has slightly better luck against Nick Sammons at 4, but couldn’t quite make the breakthrough in the 2nd game that might have seen him back in the match.
Tim duly beat the ailing Malcolm, leaving Peter Brightwell and John Creek again with the task of rescuing the tie for Knole. Peter nearly pulled off his part of the job – but after going 2-1 up, he lost the 4th game badly and needed to take the see-saw 5th to win. In spite of going 7-5 and 8-6 up, Pete just failed to get over the finish line ahead.
John had an equally up and down match for the first two games, before taking the 3rd surprisingly easily. Disappointingly, he could not sustain the effort, failing to keep with his opponent in the fourth and fifth.
So, a good effort, but a tough loss to take. The next few weeks will see the return of more players, though. And some easier opposition (on paper). Maybe mid-table by the summer solstice?
Oh! And Pete managed to break two rackets (one of his own and one of the Captain's :( )