O'Sullivan Chases Medals at National Vets Championships
Representing Queensland at his maiden Australian Veterans Championships in Albury, New South Wales, James O’Sullivan has played very well for the Queensland men’s over-60 A-team. As the Rocky club’s sole representative at this annual tournament O’Sullivan has returned a solid win-loss ratio in the team event which has assisted his outfit to reach the semi-finals and in with a chance to win a medal. O’Sullivan’s team was scheduled to take to the courts at the Lauren Jackson Sports Centre yesterday afternoon against the very strong NSW side and the victor will be pitted against the teams from either Victoria or New Zealand in the gold medal match today. The individual singles and doubles events will be contested after the massive team comp has completed.
In the second outing of a new season in open grade at the city’s club the players appear to getting used to the different format in that they are playing singles matches in group round-robins each week with a promotion and relegation aspect which enables participants to travel across the six courts as the season unfolds.
With this format the competition can become very interesting particularly as some players can face off against the same opponents in consecutive instalments thus giving some with the opportunity of ‘revenge’ after a loss in the previous encounter.
At the stronger end of the fixture in the last round Rayden Smith again gained promotion after taking on Chris Leitner, Monica Deeth and Cooper Bulow and returned an undefeated scorecard. Deeth edged out Bulow in the count-back for second spot by a mere two points after they both only lost to the stronger game of Smith.
In a surprise on the next court Geoff Geddes prevailed over Nick Green for the top spot after Geddes won a close encounter when they clashed. Whilst Green went down by a few points to Geddes he prevailed over Warun Wilkinson and Julien Wright, as did Geddes although he had a few difficulties when taking on Wilkinson and only scraped home.
On the next court Jakob Baker earned another promotion up the list for next week’s outing when he outed Jeff Jordan, Oliver Wright and Sajan Baral. He had to lift his game towards the end of the clash with Jordan and only won by a couple of points after his opponent pegged back a handy lead around the half-way mark. Wright did well when pitted against Jordan and held on for the duration of the clash prior to a loss by a few points in yet another tight finish.
Allan Clarke earned a promotion to the top table for the next round after posting victories over Hilton Kane, Niro De Silva and Pam Clarke while Patricia Green was able to arrange to stay on the top table for the third consecutive week after surviving by one point on count-back over fellow veteran stager Helga Leitner. Green looked the goods for comfortable survival after she bundled out both Joe Clifton and Tom Tonkin with relevant ease going by the scorecard. However, Leitner sprung an impressive surprise when she conjured an impressive victory over the front-runner and had she been able to finish this contest a mere point earlier she would be the player who could boast winning that table on the night via count-back of points won.
