WITH Okehampton Squash Club first team without a fixture this week, prior to their crunch promotion clash next week, it was Okehampton second team who had a fixture against Barnstaple seconds.

The seconds team had suffered a heavy loss in the reverse fixture in the first half of the season but, although going down to defeat again, put up a good showing against a strong team.

At string 5, Barrie Sharpe started match strongly by going into a 2-0 lead. However, his hard hitting opponent gradually came into the match and recovered to win 3-2.

At string 4 Jack Barkwell came up against an experienced opponent who had a strong short game. Stuart Lord, at string 3, also went down 3-2, losing a tight final game. Stuart pushed his opponent and was unlucky to lose.

In the string 2 match Shane Vallance came up against a technically strong opponent who he had lost heavily to earlier in the season. However, Shane recovered from 2-0 to push his opponent with some long rallies, but again losing a tight final game to lose the match.

Shawn Jones at string 1 did not get his normal running game going and went down 3-0.

Again, it was a story of the seconds not quite winning those tight games, eventually going down 20-5, but competing well in most of the string matches.