Mens 1st team vs Macclesfield

Macclesfield came to Mersey on a very hot and humid evening, just walking on the courts and it was pouring off us, anyway much better these conditions than the wind tunnel we often have.

Macc came to Mersey off the back of a strong season last year having finished 3rd and at the time of the match were in 4th, just behind us in the table. Neither of us had played each other for a few years having been in different divisions so it was hard to know what to expect although with both teams having a decent first half of the season it could be close.

Big Andy Hampson deputising for the work committed Simon Jones was the only change to the usual line up.

Paul Mannion and Rafa Teddy Bennett (that’s due to his knee bandages!!!) opened up with a challenging but in control win 6-1 6-4. Paul Clarke, (having just about recovered from Sareth Humpages 40th party on Saturday night) and Mark Bailey got a good start against Macc 2's and took it 6-2 6-2. Longest match of the opening round was Andy and Neil Cutler still going on when others had finished- a close one but a fantastic half 4-6 6-5 gave us a great first round lead of 5-1.

Atmosphere at the MerseyDome was hotting up, like the weather, although most of the cheering was for the Mersey cricket team who seemed to be doing quite well - more drinks between events and a successful 2nd round of matches saw us take those 4-2 so overall a match score so far of 9-3 in our favour.

Pizzas were ordered by Neil before starting the last round of matches as we like our healthy after match suppers and then onto the last 3 matches. Paul and Rafa took their final 2 sets to finish with a clean sweep of 6 sets won to no losses, similarly Paul and Mark had a 6-0 evning and with Andy and Neil taking a set off the first couple it turned out to be a very successful few hours with a winning score of 14-3.

Paul Mannion and his Paolo Rossi tribute shirt, together with Rafa did the post pizza washing up and off we went looking forward to rest of 2nd half of the season.

We have almost certainly achieved our first objective of finishing in the top 6 to ensure tennis at this level for next season before the planned restructure. Whilst we know there wont be any formal promotion from the division it would be nice to see how we can do in our last 4 matches of which we have 2 next week. Cheadle on Monday 6 July and Northern on Wednesday 8th.

Paul Clarke