Weston And Henderson Bring Vultures Down To Earth

Because of the closure of Redlands School for the fitting of new lighting this week most of the action took place in Division Two due to matches having to be cancelled but that didn’t stop there being plenty of action elsewhere. One such match was between top of the table Sparken Hill Vultures and title challengers Manton Sports with the Sports team pulling out all the stops to inflict the first defeat of the season for the Vultures. The star players for Sports were James Weston and Ian Henderson who both remained unbeaten in their singles matches to register impressive hat tricks before teaming up to take the doubles as well. The only successes in a 7-3 defeat for the Vultures trio of James Wormwell, Ben Crapper and Kyle McIntosh came when they all comfortably beat John Lowde, but it was never going to be enough to stop Sports registering a deserved victory. The defeat for Sparken Hill Vultures opens up the Division Two title race in which Manton Sports will surely have a say in as the season progresses.
Another side that are challenging for the title and hot on the heels of the Vultures are Worksop Welfare Snipers who had a 9-1 win this week at home against DTH Redlands Rookies which now puts then just 2 points behind the Vultures having played the same number of games. Ben Swain and Erlands Skels both battled hard and won all their three singles games with Jim Westwood adding two wins losing out to Dennis Learad in a five-set thriller. Swain and Skels maintained their winning ways in the doubles as they defeated Lewis Linacre and Chris Clemson to cement a solid looking win.
Stanley Street ‘B’ are also in the mix and they had another good win this week against Sparken Hill Eagles who are struggling to field a full team each week and having to play players up from the division below with this week being no exception with Neil Penny joining John Hallgarth and Brain Allen to do battle with the Stanley Street side of Andy Kirkland, Ralph Rodda and the unbeaten Mark Sansom who stretched his unbeaten run to 18 wins out of 18 with a comfortable hat trick of wins. Andy Kirkland added a further two wins over Hallgarth and Penny and only missing out on his own hat trick by the skin of his teeth losing in 5 sets to Brian Allen. Rodda chipped in with a single win over Penny before Kirkland and Sansom took the doubles in another 5-set marathon against Hallgarth and Allen to seal a 7-3 victory.
In previous weeks Manton Tigers had got back to winning ways after a poor start to their league campaign and had won their last two matches but they ran into an improving Worksop Welfare Harriers ‘A’ side who gave them a bit of a thumping and if it wasn’t for the Tigers Bill Bateman winning two of his three singles they would have gone home with a 10-0 defeat rather than an 8-2 one. Bateman had two terrific tussles, first with George Makrakis who he beat 3-1 before coming back from 2-0 down against Mitchell Radford to beat him 3-2 but this was the Tigers only successes on the night as both Steve Beeston and Phil Hall lost all their games. The Player of The Match performance went to the Harriers Farhad Saiepour who had straight sets wins over all the Tigers players before also winning the doubles with Radford put the icing on the cake of a very good win.
Division One Results: Sparken Hill Starlings 2 Worksop Miners Welfare 8, Sparken Hill Buzzards 5 Sparken Hill Ospreys 5.
Division Three Result: Worksop Owls 6 DTH Redlands Red Devils 4