Club Night 2018, with the 2025 register in brackets: Linda (present), Me (present), Sandra (present), Martin (absent), Liza (present), Andrea (present), Mark (RIP), David (present), Simon (absent), Ivor (absent)
22 October – Real Tennis Club Night At Lord’s
When I talk about club night at Lord’s, I am talking about a 9 or 10 times a year midweek informal event, enabling real tennis players of varying standards to rock up for some doubles.
Being a quintessentially varying standard player of the most average sort, I have stumbled into the role of curating these events. In truth, it’s probably more to do with the fact that I’m quite good at marking – i.e. umpiring and scoring.
We had a great turnout at Lord’s on 22 October – about a dozen brave souls gave it a go. There were one or two new faces, which always makes the handicapping just a little harder. One chap, who was new to the game and said he’d only played a few times and had a couple of lessons, nevertheless hit the ball like a seasoned player. It took the more experienced players a while to work him out and he’ll soon enough work out what they were doing to work him out.
It’s a great sport – requiring thought and mental agility as well as sport and (hopefully) physical agility.
23 October – Youth Club Night At Kimchee
But the term “club night” also makes me think of youth club night, which used to be an almost weekly thing in Streatham back in the 1970s. More than 10 years ago, several of us regrouped (as it were) and have been meeting up for youth club nights, mostly as an annual event in the late spring. The headline photo is from May 2018.
This year’s spring event was a very small scale affair, while I was still recovering from my hip operation. I sense that the four who gathered then felt that four was not a quorum. Hence the radical idea of having an autumn rescheduling at the scene of the spring “crime” – Kimchee in Kings Cross.
Six of us gathered: Andrea (thanks for organising), David, Linda, Liza, Me & Sandra.
This was the first “scale” gathering since the sad and untimely passing last year of Mark Phillips whom I (and indeed several of us) had known since we were very little indeed; before youth club.
When the idea of having these gatherings was first mooted (I think we started in 2013 or 2014 – I’ll need to diary trawl for the earliest one – as the first few were pre-Ogblog) – both Mark and I agreed to attend with some trepidation. I know this because I used to see Mark’s mum, Shirl, when I visited my mum in Nightingale. I also learnt via Shirl that Mark, like me, was surprisingly pleased with the gathering and resolute in wanting such gatherings to be repeated, which they have been.
My favourite Mark-related story from our gatherings is from 2019, when I discovered that Mark was now the headmaster at Deptford Green School, around the time that my cricket charity, the London Cricket Trust, was putting facilities into Deptford Park, in part for use by his school. The link below is the story of what happened – the punchline being that the great South African cricketer, AB de Villiers, rocked up at Deptford Park to open our new pitch a few weeks later
26 October – Silver Racquet Match At Lord’s
Janie and I brought our Sunday morning lawners slot at Boston Manor forward an hour, so we might get to Lord’s in time to see most of the Silver Racquet match between Bertie Vallat and Ben Yorston.
Aficionados of Ogblog will no doubt remember Bertie’s first mention, from 2018:
I mentioned a key feature of that match to Jonathan Potter, soon after Janie and I sat down in the dedans gallery.
HARRIS: I have played Bertie myself. I took a couple of games off him playing level.
POTTER: How old?
HARRIS: (thinking…) I was about 56 I think.
POTTER: Not you. Bertie.
HARRIS: (sotto voce) 12.
Strangely, it turns out that Bertie remembers the occasion too…or at least his early moment of “fame” here on Ogblog.
But you want to know about the Silver Racquet match, not my ridiculous ramblings about one of my many historic on-court humiliations.
And so you should, because it really was a corker of a match. We weren’t really expecting an epic battle, but we got a five set epic, which included some truly exceptional shot-making and especially impressive defensive retrieving by both players.
The dedans was pretty full for the second and third sets, but several attendees, not expecting quite such a long battle, had other engagements to get to, so only a few of us were able to stick around and see the match reach its conclusion.
Janie and I really were impressed and engrossed in watching the match. Even the final set, when both players were clearly pushing themselves towards and beyond their physical limits, was a great watch. Amateur sport at its best.
But you don’t need to take my word for it – Paul Cattermull has written an excellent match report for the T&RA, which you can read by clicking here.
You don’t even have to take Paul’s word for it – see for yourself on the MCC YouTube recording for that day, from 2 hrs 20 minutes in until the sweet/bitter end:
Winning the Silver Racquet doesn’t just mean a trophy and bottle of pop. It also confers the right on the winner to compete for the Gold Racquet. Unfortunately, Janie and I won’t be able to make that match. Maybe next time.