Let's hear it for the boys!

Notts. over 45's came 2nd. in stage 2 to gain promotion.

Nottinghamshire Over 45’s travelled to Bridgenorth Leisure Centre which must have the coldest and darkest courts in England!!! to contest the Stage 2 promotion weekend and finished the weekend runner-up behind Kent.

We had to play Shropshire, Somerset and Kent over the weekend and knew that we need to have good wins over Shropshire and Somerset on Saturday to stand a chance of promotion, as on paper Kent had a far stronger team that all of the other counties, this was backed up by them playing premier squash just over a season ago, and was also shown in the results as they finished the weekend with maximum points and only conceded a total of 4 points over the whole weekend.

Nottingham go the weekend off to a flying start betting Somerset 5-0

Clive Walter won                              7/9, 9/4, 9/1, 9/7             3-1

Greg Watkins won                           9/1, 9/1, 9/0                      3-0

Fitz Haye won                                    10/8, 10/8, 9/3                  3-0

Neil Thorpe won                              9/6, 9/0, 9/0                      3-0

Alastair Parsons won                      9/6, 9/5, 9/2                      3-0

Clive Walter had the toughest match as his opponent was playing for the county for the first time and tried to make his mark, but Clive stayed focused and did not get involved in the verbal sparring to claim the win. Neil was just starting to get warmed up to the task when his opponent putted his back and had to retire leaving Neil fresh for his 2^nd match of the day. The other games where straight forward wins giving us the 20 points needed if we were to get promoted.

The second match of the weekend was against Shropshire who we played in Stage 1 and had a tight 3-2 victory over. We again needed to try and claim maximum points but try to reduce the points against us as Shropshire where playing Somerset on Sunday which was a match that they were expecting to  win.

Clive Walter lost                               4/9, 7/9, 6/9                       0-3

Greg Watkins won                           9/7, 9/2, 9/6                       3-0

Neil Thorpe won                              9/4, 9/1, 9/4                       3-0

Alastair Parsons won                      9/3, 10/8, 6/9, 9/1            3-1

Clive Lawance-Frobes lost            9/7, 9/7, 4/9, 3/9, 3/9     2-3

The game did not start as planned and Nottinghamshire found themselves 0-2 down after the first 2 rubbers, with Clive Lawance-Frobes playing has first match back after injury losing 2-3 and Clive Walters losing 0-3 to a very focused Shropshire number 1, so it was down to Alastair, Neil and Greg to win and win well to make sure that our dreams stayed alive. Alastair was next on court and went into a comfortable 1-0 lead, but then at 8-1 up in the 2^nd started to lose concentration letting his opponent get back to 8-8 before closing the game out 10-8. On the next court Neil was fully focused on the task at hand WINNING and went storming into a 2-0 before his opponent know what had hit him. Back to Alastair who found his concentration and won the next 2 game to make the match score 1-2. Neil was taking no prisoners and closed his match 9/4 for a 3-0 win and levelled the match 2-2, putting no pressure on team captain Greg to close out the match!!!! Greg was totally focused on winning and leading Nottingham to promotion and this saw him race into a 2-0 lead, knowing that we could let Shropshire claim any more points Greg chased ball down and closed out the 3^rd 9/4 giving Nottingham a 3-2 victory but also gave use 16 points and restricted Shropshire to 7 points.

At the end of the first day we were 28 points clear of 3^nd placed Shropshire with 1 game to play and were 4 points behind Kent the leaders, so we had achieved what we had set out to do and  gained promotion with a match to spare. This proved invaluable as we could only raise 4 players for the match on Sunday, of which due to other commitment only 2 of the team from Saturday could play.

Greg Watkins lost                            5/9, 4/9, 8/10                     0-3

Alastair Parsons lost                        4/9, 0/9, 2/9                       0-3

Kevin Britchford lost                       2/9, 4/9, 1/9                       0-3

Murray Frew lost                             4/9, 0/9, 2/9                       0-3

I would like to thank Kevin (who made his county debut) and Murray to turning out  on Sunday, which meant that we had forfilled the weekend, and finished runner-up to Kent and our now promoted to Division 1 for the 2011/12 season.