The county’s Under 15 Shires League team made the journey down to Huddersfield on Sunday to play their rearranged match against the Yorkshire 1st team. It was always likely to be a difficult match and so it proved, particularly as they were without no. 1 boy Ashraf Alam and then experienced an injury to Andrew Howard. Andrew’s father Chris, aided by Christine Railton, travelled with the team which comprised the following players:
Anna Railton, Emily Harrison, Lexie Howard and Sarah Bambrick; Alex Jay, Andrew Howard, George Moran and Jamie Tinnion. Many thanks to Chris and Christine and well done to the players. This is Chris’s report:
It was a long way to go to receive a 20-0 defeat – however the Yorkshire side appeared to be at full strength and maturity. Northumberland, on the other hand, are still a young developing side and it was quickly clear that we are asking a lot of our younger players to step up into the breech.
This they do time and time again – today proved that with determination and guile we managed some quite close matches and nobody could be criticised for lack of effort. Unfortunately, Andrew Howard pulled a muscle in his back during warm up and was unable to compete in a manner which he would have liked, having to withdraw from the two level doubles and conceding both games.
In the opening round of mixed doubles, Alex Jay and Anna Railton played very well against the experienced pair of Hannah Boden and Dominic Phillips. As did Jamie Tinnion and Sarah Bambrick, taking 13 off Harry Walker and Abbie Speechley. In fact, Jamie is still very new to the sport and was playing in only his second representative match: a great effort by him.
In the boys singles, Alex Jay went close against Harry Walker, pushing him to 15 in the second end. Anna Railton got into double figures against Beth, the stronger of the Speechley twins, by playing some very nice badminton. The best match for me was played by Jamie Tinnion who went down to 17 in both his singles ends, demonstrating a gutsy performance and with a little bit more luck the result could have gone in his favour.
Anna and Sarah surprised the Speechley twins in the girls doubles, scoring 12 and 15. But it was not until the final match of the day when Northumberland managed to get one end off this very strong Yorkshire team: Emily Harrison and Lexie Howard eventually losing 21-15, 13-21 and 21-18 to the twins. They were 16-5 down in the final end but fought back strongly, narrowly missing out in the end. A really good and determined performance.