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Scottish
Universities Championships 2009
29-30 November, Edinburgh |
Fraser Rickman reports ...
It’s a short distance out of Edinburgh city centre to Heriot
Watt’s impressive host facilities for this years Scottish
Universities Championship, with teams all keen to secure
their chance to compete amongst British universities.
In the men's competition, Glasgow1 against Napier
set a high precedent with a closely fought battle to start
things off on Friday. The high standard was most likely
because the strong favourites Napier were playing the
reigning champions Glasgow. James Kearney described it as
‘the finals in the first round’, capturing peoples concern
over the how teams had been seeded or seemingly not seeded
at all. A beaten Glasgow were confined to the bottom half of
the table as a result of the dubious first round pairings
and concluded the weekend in ninth position.
Things started to take shape on Saturday during the quarter
finals. Heriot Watt convincingly saw off Dundee
winning four games to one. The St Andrews meet with
Strathclyde was a much closer affair, with St
Andrews1 narrowly stealing a place in the semi’s by securing
a 3-2 win overall. Strathclyde’s last minute team put up
strong resistance, especially Umar Chaudhary who exhibited a
string of committed performances throughout the competition.
They went on to finish in an admirable seventh position.
Aberdeen 1 versus Edinburgh 2 was an equally
close battle in the quarters. Aberdeen emerged victorious
with competition organiser Henry Pearce narrowly losing out
to Nick Forrest in the deciding match. It was an inspiring
performance from Henry considering he was solely responsible
for overseeing the weekends proceedings alongside playing
matches. Edinburgh’s strong squad still managed fifth
overall. The other quarter finals was the formidable Napier
against RGU and having won all their matches 3-0 at first,
second and third seed, RGU were unable to prevent Napier
from proceeding to the semi finals.
The afternoon made way for some tense semi final clashes.
Not least was St Andrews taking on Heriot Watt. The first
game was between James Killingsbeck for St Andrews and Rory
Gammell, the ex president of St Andrews squash club now
representing Heriot Watt. The grudge match left Heriot Watt
ahead and they went on to win another two games resulting in
a 3-2 win for Heriot Watt.
Elsewhere in the women's competition things were very close
with Edinburgh, Dundee and Glasgow all
looking strong. Last year's winners Aberdeen were not in the
competition this year and so teams had everything to play
for with no firm favourite emerging. Dundee slowly dominated
by obtaining maximum points in every round, guaranteeing
them first place before even going into their final game
against St Andrews. Nevertheless they still gave a class
performance to hammer home their victory and their final
score of 64 exceeded Glasgow in second place by 19 points,
reflecting the extent of their achievement. Edinburgh were
narrowly pipped to second, finishing third with 38 points,
making it a very tense match when the two teams met. Rachel
Collins put in a solid performance with her powerful left
arm forearm proving difficult to counter.
A name that kept cropping up was Napier’s Lyall Paterson.
Currently ranked fourth in Scotland and finishing an
impressive sixth at the European championships, which
coupled with the strength of the remaining Napier squad made
their first place victory almost inevitable. This does not
detract from the impressive performances that Lyall and his
team mates put in, the top two seeds not dropping a single
game throughout the tournament and Lyall even managed to
squeeze in some showboating in his final.
The men's playoff for third and fourth attracted as much
attention as the final, as the teams were closely matched.
Louie Morrill gave another spirited display at third seed
and his second team counterpart, Amory Bennett also had an
outstanding tournament. Both players proved to be excellent
third seeds.
The level of squash over the weekend was exceptional with
clean yet ferocious matches providing constant
entertainment. Congratulations extends to all teams that
took part.
Final Mens positions:
Napier
Heriot Watt 1
Aberdeen 1
St Andrews 1
Edinburgh 2
Dundee 1
Strathclyde
RGU
Glasgow 1
St Andrews 2
Edinburgh 3
Dundee 2
Glasgow 2
Heriot Watt 2
Heriot Watt 3
Aberdeen 2 |
Final Womens positions:
Dundee 1
Glasgow
Edinburgh 1
Edinburgh 2
St Andrews |
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