The club had entered six teams in the 2007 Spring Pennant competition.
The teams were in A5, B3, two C1 teams, C3 and C4.
Mark Ireland's B3 team of Ian Jacobs, Dave Armstrong, Mickey Bek, and Paul Coggiola did very well by making it into the Grand Final against well-coached Engadine.
Unfortunately, the young Engadine side were just too good on the night and had a reasonably convincing win.
Our best performer here was Mickey Bek who managed to win his rubber 3-2 against Daniel, a very good young player.
Because Engadine had won both their previous rubbers 3-0, the Grand Final was theirs and it wasn't necessary to play the fourth match.
Paul Wright's C1 team of Rohit Autar, Brian Pisani, Gerald Walz and Bill Fountas had to play raging hot favorites Heroes Hill in the Grand Final.
It was going to be a tough assignment for Saints, as Heroes Hill had swept all before them during the comp.
They went into the grand final as undefeated minor premiers.
This grand final would be won by the team that had the better tactics on the night.
It was going to be the experience and cunning of the 'old heads' of St.George versus the youth and agility of Heroes Hill.
Our tactics would be dependant on us winning the toss, and we did! We felt our number four player, Gerald Walz, had the game, experience and cool to upset the youngster Andrew.
Gerry played one of the best tactical matches of his life.
He won the first set reasonably easily, just lost the second set, but from there on controlled the match just perfectly.
Once Gerry was able to get ahead in the last two sets, young Andrew's frustrations and lack of patience got the better of him.
He started making many unforced errors and in the end went down to Gerry 3-1.
The second rubber was a different story.
This time it was Heroes Hill's call.
They called number one.
Paul Wright had to play Nathan who was the top and form player of this grade.
Although Paul tried very hard, Nathan was just too good winning 3-0.
It was now one rubber apiece.
Next, we called our number two player Rohit Autar.
He had to play the experienced Ernesto.
Again we felt that if Rohit played the right kind of game he could win and put us in the box seat! The tactics were to keep Ernesto back and play the drop-shot when the opportunity arose.
This tactic worked beautifully and Rohit won 3-0.
It was now two rubbers to one Saints way, and set count 6-4 our way.
We only had to win two sets in the next rubber to win the grand final! In the last rubber Brian Pisani had to play John from Heroes Hill.
By keeping the ball tight down the walls and staying composed, Brian was able to frustrate John into making many errors.
In the end it was a reasonably easy 3-0 win to Brian and a great grand final win for our C1 team.
We had won the Grand Final against the odds 3 rubbers to one and Saints first Grand Final win for a number of seasons! Briefly, the Round Robin champion for 2007 was Rohit Autar who pretty much led all the way.
He played exceptionally well in all the monthly matches and deserves his crown.
On closing, anyone interested in joining the Squash Club should contact Peter Lupevski by e-mail Plupevski@ryde.nsw.gov.au or phone 0408 462 659.
Until next time, good squashing everybody!
Brian Pisani
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St George Leagues Club
Squash Club
