Friday, April 07, 2006

Relegation Battle

This Sunday I will be representing York Veterans (over 40's) in the County League Premier division (at Hull) and we are in danger of getting relegated. The bottom of the table is really tight with one point separating the bottom five teams.
Ourselves, Dewsbury, Halifax and Keighley all have 3 points while Hull have 4 points. We have the best sets ratio of all 5 teams in the shake up (two go down).
We have two matches on Sunday the first against Dewsbury in a must win game (lose this and we will be down), a draw will se us relying on other results too much I think.
Our 2nd match is against Bradford who are top of the division and we will be struggling to get anything out of that match, thats why the Dewsbury match is so important.
Some of the teams actually have 3 matches as we have played a game more, these are the last matches.
Teams consist of 3 players per side all play all plus one doubles match. I am our top player with 14 wins from 18 games and our captain has told me he is expecting 3 from me against Dewsbury. Our number 2 player Brian as done really well this season with 7 wins from 18 in his first season at this level.
The number 3 position is up for grabs our other players Doug and Richard have identical records with only one win from nine games. I think Richard will get picked as he has played against harder teams and as been playing well in training. Whoever plays we will be looking for one win from them.
Selection is not straight forward because I am carrying an ankle injury. I played a Veterans rating tournament in Cheshire last weekend (came 5th out of 40) against players from all over the north of England. The competition ended with 3 players level on two defeats (I lost 4) which really irritated me because I beat two of the winners. I actually lost (all close) my first 3 matches of the day against players I should beat. In fact I was so cheesed off with my performance I didn't blog about it at the time.
Anyway to make matters worse this is when I twisted my ankle, no not playing but after the tournament when I stood in a Pot hole walking to my car and went over on my ankle.
It swelled up a lot on Monday but eased Tuesday so I decided to train on Wednesday night but that was a mistake. The ankle was quite bad yesterday but is easing, it will be getting plenty of rest (and ice packs) tommorrow. I will probably have some pain killers to play on Sunday.

http://www.ytta.co.uk/Yorkshire%20Files/Weekly%20Results%202005-2006%20Div%201%20Vets.pdf

2 comments:

Jenny said...

Take care of that ankle and I am sure you will do fine. Best of luck to you and your team!

Mick & Cathy said...

Jenny,
Thanks for your encouragement. The ankle is a lot better today so I am optimistic I should be ok.

BF,
I'm a total idiot I admit. A complete post about Sundays Games without mentioning the fact it is Table Tennis in the Yorkshire league.
Well I will be trying to "Score" points.