Bristol
With the Moreton team continuing to suffer from the loss of Prophet and an injury to David Aldwinckle whose Achilles heel turns out to be his knee, it was a much-depleted team of Keith Beechener and Tony Branfield that made the trip on Sunday to visit former Moretonian Ben Coleman’s Bristol. The match consisted of two singles rubbers and a doubles rubber. First up Keith took on Louis Richards a young improving player with boundless energy. Too much for Keith who went down 6-3, 6-4.
For the doubles a tiring Keith stayed on court where he was joined by Tony who demonstrated his inability to read the Bristol bounce by playing a wide range of shots predominantly from the wood of his racket. Despite the random effect this had on the ball the pair still fell 9-4 to the home team of Julian Hemming and David Pearce.
With the match lost it was left to Branfield to try and salvage some of Moreton’s pride in a singles rubber against Julian Hemming. This rubber started in much the same way as the previous two with a quick win for Bristol, 6-4, before Branfield seemed to discover his racket came with a set of strings and stepped up his game; better late than never. Taking the second set 3-6 he forced the rapidly tiring pair into a 3rd. The momentum stayed with Moreton 3-5 but Hemming wasn’t done and fought back to 5 all. Reverting to his earlier form for the final game Branfield was able to bamboozle his opponent with a series of random edges he was too tired to chase down. The set and the 90 minute rubber went to Moreton.
Final score Bristol 2 Moreton 1.
The players retired to lunch.