We had a fine day of singles and doubles in Manchester, very well organised by our local OT, Geoff Heap.

All four of the OTs had handicaps in the 40s, so Geoff arranged a similar quartet of Macunians and we were able to play all the matches level, with two singles and one doubles each. Each match was played on the basis of one set to six, but we started badly, with Richard Dalzell, Patrick Cogan and Geoff Heap losing the first three singles with a total of only four games between them. By the lunch break, however, we had squared the match, with good wins for Will Chawner in his morning singles and for Richard & Patrick and Geoff & Will in the doubles. We were quietly confident at lunch with our Match Manager deciding who would play whom in the afternoon, but we had clearly been lulled into a flase sense of security over the excellent lunch in the splendid club dining room. We lost all the singles in the afternoon in spite of some closely contested matches and so Manchester ran out deserved winners by seven rubbers to three.

Of course, we would have won if, as suggested by our leader early on, the doubles matches had counted for quintuple points!

An excellent day, however, well marked by Steve Brockenshaw, and clearly a fixture to be repeated next season - hopefully a little later in the year, with golf on the Friday, real tennis on Saturday and rackets on Sunday….