The Chiswick men’s team had our last league match of the summer Middlesex League season last Thursday, but before we played, we got some good news regarding our National League position: Thistleworth had beaten Harrow Baptist TC and Lowlands, which meant we avoided relegation, ending the season 4th out of 6 in division 6 west (despite having only won one match all season!):

Well done guys!! 

Our task to avoid relegation in division 5 of the Middlesex League was to get at least 9 points in our last match against relegation rivals Hartswood II. We had a strong team, and had beaten Hartswood the previous two seasons, so we felt confident even though we hadn’t won any matches so far in the Middlesex League.

It didn’t start well, all three Chiswick pairs losing in the first round. And in the second round, only Barnaby and Nat won their set against opposition 3rd pair Richard and Martin.

Score at the halfway point: Hartswood II 10- Chiswick 2.

In the final round, all three pairs shared the points: Barnaby and Nat tied 6-3, 3-6 against former Chiswick player Tristan Marnitz, while Frank and Ed tied 4-6, 6-3 against Harry and Milo. It came down to the final match: Chiswick rookie Simon and Tristan Rowick won their first set against Richard and Martin 7-5, so whichever team won the last set would (probably) stay up. All the other matches had finished. The score was 4-1 to the Hartswood pair, then 5-2, but the Chiswick players came back to 5-4. It was deuce- sudden death! Hartswood won. 

Final score Hartswood II 16- Chiswick 8.

We did our maths again and realised it actually meant both teams were tied on 62 points (with Lensbury now safe on 64). Who would stay up? It wasn’t actually till the next day that skipper Ed checked the rules: it would come down to % of games won. Ed counted all the Chiswick games (44.7%) and all the Hartswood games (45.1%) and realised we’d lost out by 4 games. If we’d won 2 more games against Hartswood, we’d have stayed up. We would also have stayed up if the criterion was based on sets won (36.9% versus 34.4%). Full table as below:

In short, it couldn’t really have been closer! We can consider ourselves unlucky not to stay up in the Middlesex League, although in a sense maybe we did deserve to be relegated considering we didn’t win any matches all season. Also we were quite fortunate to stay up in the National League. And there’s always a chance that we get reprieved (if more teams drop out higher up the league)

Anyway, we will have an end of season match in September sometime.

Well played everyone, have a great rest of the summer, and let’s look ahead to a strong winter season!