Island badminton team hanging on in reglegation struggle

Island badminton team hanging on in reglegation struggle

A vital point secured in defeat against Hampshire 2nds yesterday puts Credit Suisse Jersey level on points with Avon 2nds who still have one match left.

Jersey lost 11-4 to Wiltshire on Saturday and went down 9-6 to front-runners Hampshire yesterday.

With Jersey having beaten Avon 2nds 13-2 earlier in the season, there is a least hope that they can survive, with their rivals’ final match being at home to third-placed Devon 1sts next weekend.

Jersey earned that extra league point by winning six games against Hampshire, but should Avon beat, or manage to take a point off Devon, they will stay up while Jersey will go down.

There were pluses for Jersey in both weekend matches.

In the singles, on both days, playing respectively at No 1 and 2, Kerry Coombs-Goodfellow and Kim Ashton won all four of their singles matches and, as a partnership, won all of their ladies’ doubles matches.

Chris Cotillard and Gavin Carter won one of their men’s doubles matches yesterday while the closest game of all – and the vital point clincher – came right at the end of the day, this time a mixed pairs’ match when Kerry Coombs-Goodfellow, with Cotillard, clinched a nail-biting third set against Hampshire 2s, 22-20.

Jersey team manager Ian Coombs-Goodfellow said: ‘I know they gave it their very best and that’s all you can ask.

That final mixed doubles win could prove crucial.

However, during the season we have, as any team in this Division would have done, really missed Mark Constable and Kerry Coombs-Goodfellow.

Mark has missed six out of our eight matches through injury and Kerry three.

When they are both playing at this level then we are virtually assured of an overall victory.

We have also greatly missed the services of Lucy Burns for the entire season (she has recently become a mother) and former South African Olympian Anton Kriel who returned home at the start of the season.

I ‘ve no doubt that if those individuals had been available all season then we would have actually won the division.’ Meanwhile, in Jersey, at the New Gilson Hall on Saturday, a very young Island side (under-15s/under-12s) went down 32-4, playing against Guernsey for the Leadbeater Shield in a revised age group format.

Jersey’s only successes came from captain Jade Coombs-Goodfellow, playing at No 1 against Guernsey’s No 1, Harriet Thoumine (21-17, 21-16); Harry Watson (a straight-set win over Nick Abbott 21-17, 21-19); Natasha Hutchings (a 21-8, 12-21, 21-16 victory over Emily Trebert at No.

2); and, in the ladies’ doubles, a win for Jade Coombs-Goodfellow and Natasha Hutchings when they the combined to beat Trebert and Hannah Spittal 21-15, 14-21, 21-13.

‘It was a heavy defeat, but this was a very young team we sent out to play against Guernsey,’ said coach Carmen Cann, Despite the overall scoreline there were many close and exciting matches.

Credit Suisse Jersey Seniors: Chris Cotillard, Gavin Carter, Clive Dunford, Steve McGrath, Kerry Coombs-Goodfellow, Kim Ashton, Tracy Hudson, Lyndsey Woodward.

Leadbeater squad: Harry Watson, Piers Le Moignan, Matthew Peters, George Machon, Matthew Bignall, Brett Coombs-Goodfellow, Richard Streets, Jack Gibbs, Jade Coombs-Goodfellow, Natasha Hutchings, Caroline Bignall, Emily Temple Redshaw.

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