Herren VI win the Autumn Title!

Herren Kreisklasse C: TSV Georgii Allianz VI - ASV Botnang II 9:6

Writer's note: This report has been written in English to satisfy the requirements of our diverse multi-cultural international team.

It consists of two Indians (who don't even speak the same language), one Bangladeshi, one Italian, one Frenchman and last by not least, a German.

We have also had Greek and Dutch representation for a few games. Therefore, the official language of the 6th team has been declared to be English 😉 For the sake of improving my German, I will continue to write reports in German but will make a small exception for this one.

A familiar and friendly face greeted us in the playing hall. It was great to have Donni back after his arm injury. After a round of introductions with the newer players, the duel for the Autumn Title (Herbstmeisterschaft) began with the doubles. Only the duo of Pradeep and Alban were successful (3:1) after the doubles matches. Kazi and Schlücki lost in three sets, while Ankur and Donni had to accept a narrow defeat (9:11) in the fifth set.

Pradeep managed to reach the deciding set after trailing 0:2 against Zink. A few net and edge balls in the fifth set resulted in an unfortunate defeat. “It was a technical error that prevented me from winning the first two sets. I should have hit differently with the short pips” was Pradeep's reason for the defeat. Now that the self-professed “Equipment Junkie” has settled for his equipment rather than changing his rubbers every week, it hopefully won't take long for him to reach his previous form. However, we were then in the unexpected position of being 1:3 down in total matches.

Alban won with the smallest of margins (3:2) against Schmalz. Alban's performance can be graphed to be inversely proportional to the frequency of his exclamation of “Alban!” and directly proportional to the frequency of his exclamation of “Allez!”. One does not even need to watch the match to know how he is playing. We knew all was going well when we started to hear “Allez!” more often than “Alban!”.

In his comeback match, Donni experienced the worst luck that we have ever seen. At 11-all in the fifth set, his opponent managed to hit an edge-ball and a net-ball in succession. His opponent had the good grace to not celebrate the victory but it nevertheless put us back to 2:4 in matches.

Ankur (3:1) and Schlücki (3:0) won their matches to tie the score (4:4) but Kazi had the misfortune of playing against an ill-tempered and unfair player and lost 1:3. In a “Noppen vs. Noppen” duel, Schmalz was chanceless against Pradeep and lost 3:0. Alban also won his match against Karl-Heinz to shift the tide in our favour. After his first match, Donni managed to revive his form to conduct a 3:0 thrashing. At 7:5, it seemed that the match was almost won but things started to take a turn for the worse.

Kazi won the first set narrowly (11:9) against Sanzi but lost the next two at deuce. He managed to reach the fifth set but unfortunately lost 2:3. Schlücki played the most suspenseful match of the evening and showed great fighting spirit to win against Meisel after trailing behind 0:2 in sets.

While these two were playing, Ankur was nervously warming up, expecting to play at 7:7. However, Schlücki's comeback victory put the score at 8:6, which allowed him to play freely. At 2:0 and at 5:10, he decided to end matters and scored 7 points in succession to finish the match for his team.

On this note, we will be taking a well-earned break. Schlücki has handed out diet plans to every member of the team to make sure that we don't gain too much weight during the holidays. In case we get too fat and slow, our plan B is to order mass-order long pips for every member of the team ;-).

After the first five league matches, it felt great to be challenged by ASV Botnang. However, it felt even greater to win the match after it went down to the wire. No doubt, ASV Botnang will want their revenge in the “Rückrunde” but we will be ready and waiting.