Away to Alderley Edge, 2nd March 2022

Last night saw the weakest Warrington line-up of the season, having to call upon 3 fringe first / second team players - but man oh man - did they perform for us! Desperate to maintain our unbeaten season and clinch the title, we had to really fight to achieve that.

James Earles played Adam Turner at number 2. Both superbly strong number 2's for their teams. James Earles is the epitome of class and he showed all of that class last night. In a match which could have gone either way, Earlsey stamped his authority for the majority of the match to win 3-1. I've seen Adam play better but a lot of the time James was too accurate.

While James was dominating the glass court, second team captain Luis North was absolutely crushing it on the adjacent court. Luis has joined in with a few of our training sessions so we knew all about his formidable 'thwacking' of the squash ball. He played superbly, showing no signs of nerves and dominating from the first rally. A wonderful debut and I'm sure he'll have many more outings in our first team next season.

Following Luis were the number 5's, Rob Taylor vs Steffan Morgan. Steffan has stepped in this season to be a regular for Alderley, and vastly experienced Rob was playing his second match back after 5 months out injured. It was close all match and Rob was definitely tiring and then disaster, at 8-5 in the fifth Rob began to get excruciating pain. I feared his knee ligaments had 'gone' again - but luckily it was just cramp. He was probably just milking it for the crowd! We simply needed him to win 3 more points - but cramp is actually very difficult to play through. A few painful-to-watch rallies followed as Steffan clawed his way back to 8-8. A great winner by Rob, followed by an overly enthusiastic hit out of court from Steffan, gave Rob match ball, which he took with the best backhand volley drop of the game. Great commitment to the team by Rob to pull that one off.

Unfortunately for Warrington, Harry Faulkner was hitting winner after winner to dominate Whippy on the glass back. I've not seen Harry play that well before. Whippy was not his usual quality but credit to Harry who stepped up to play some pretty good squash. A match on the board to Alderley.

The final match was new dad Sam Wileman vs the running and whacking Pickles. Why we put a Pickles match on last I'll never know! Accustomed to having 3-2 most weeks, surely he should always play first and the other 4 matches play on the other court?! Anyway, Sam raced to a 2-0 lead with some delightful boasts and drops. But could he sustain it? Probably not! However, the 3rd saw Pickles claw his way into more and more rallies, but Sam lead 10-8 .... but couldn't convert his 2 match balls. The inevitable had begun. Pickles ran, and ran, and hit harder and harder until he crawled off the court as the victor - and I mean crawled!

Warrington won the tie 3-2 and confirmed the title would remain in their hands for another season. A good night of squash and a lovely dinner afterwards.

Andy Whipp

Apologies no photos this week