Warrington enjoyed a straight-forward(ish) win against Alderley Edge last night.

 

Bolstered by World No.9 superstar Joel Makin, and young prodigy Johan Bryant, we knew we had the chance of a 5-0 victory.

 

Lewis Doughty has been looking more aggressive in his style of squash in the last few weeks (Below). He started us off with an impressive 3-0 win against a potentially dangerous Azhan Khan. Azhan can hit some outrageous winners, but Lewis dominated from the get-go, and didn't ever give the Alderley player time to settle. Even straight-faced Lewis smiled slightly after the match when I asked him if he thought he played well!

 

 

 

Alderley Edge have become accustomed to James Pickles playing first, and then usually playing the other 4 matches on the adjacent court, as is the length of the majority of his Tuesday night contests. James is one of the fittest "club players" in the league. He can certainly hit the ball phenomenally hard too. The ball makes a different sound when he hits the ball compared to everyone else. "THWACK". Ollie did confess to feeling some nerves before last nights match. He had lost the week before and he didn't want that to happen again, and to hear Alan "tutting" from the balcony! He didn't show nerves at all, as he played a great match. He handled the Pickles powerful artillery superbly well. With the exception of the third game, where Ollie looked impatient, he put in a top performance to beat a tough opponent.

 

 

Jonah followed Lewis on the show court, but blink and you will have missed it! Jonah was as awesome as ever with his quality and his court speed, and was too good for his opponent, Tom Bamford from Pontefract (Below). Jonah was flying to Amsterdam at 7am the next morning to make his Dutch League debut.

 

 

 

 

Joel Makin was up against a decent opponent in Elijah Thomas, the World No.120 from New Zealand (Top & Below). Joel is actually slightly injured at the moment but looked in absolute control, almost in exhibition mode, as his superiority in every department shone through. Elijah did put in a fair account of himself and never gave up on any shot, which is not easy playing against someone of Joel's calibre, where most people would be exhausted after the first rally.

 

 

 

Charlie found himself in a proper battle on the side court, as after 20 minutes he was 2-0 down to an in-form and surprisingly un-injured Mike Potter (Below). Potter is gritty and quite tricky. Charlie's straight drives were not good enough, and not exposing Mike Potter to the corners of the court. A quick tactical change from Charlie, to allow him to expose his opponents movements, made all the difference. Charlie dug deep, applied the tactical changes well, and clawed the match back. The big builder impressed us all how he battled back from the brink of a loss, to win an additional 3 points for our team, and with Cheetham Hill breathing down our necks vying to take our title off us, every point counts.

 

 

 

Next week, we travel to Wrexham if you fancy making the journey to come and support us? Again, we have Joel and Jonah playing. Wrexham have, Welsh No.3, Owain Taylor and 19-year-old Welsh No.4, Rhys Evans. 

 

 

Andy Whipp

Photos: Richard Bradbury