Huge congratulations to our men’s 4th team in last night’s Floodlight League finals!

The team, superbly captained by Mark Cunningham, and also containing Harry Wall, Roy Bailey and Ken Browne, won our first ever Class 5 pennant at Lansdowne Tennis Club against Sherries 2nds.

The bookies favourites when the team was selected were appropriately ruthless with none of them dropping a set thoughout the campaign. In the final Harry and Ken won 6-4 6-1 in the doubles and Roy won 6-1 6-4 in a singles. Mark was in total control of the other singles leading 6-4 3-1 when play was stopped and victory was secured.

In a rare and wonderful achievement our 3rd team also made the final in Class 4 against Rathgar 2nds. Sam Hanley had a storming campaign as captain, and was supported by his brother Luke, myself and Paul Fitzgerald, who subbed in on the night for the flu ridden Brian O’Gorman.

I was first off court going down 6-3 6-2 in a singles with 3 breaks of serve doing all the damage. Luke made a heroic comeback to win 2-6 7-5 and then 10-8 in a nail biting champions tie break in the other singles. Sam and Paul played some outstanding doubles in the deciding game but were heartbreakingly edged out 10-8 in a 3rd set champions tiebreak. A huge congratulations and commiserations on making the final and losing out by the narrowest possible margin.

Getting two teams into the final was made possible by the strong participation of our top players on the 1st and 2nd teams. Many thanks to them. Those teams both came close to making the playoffs and will be back in force next year.

Over the course of the league we had 12 subs support our teams and all made significant contributions. Many thanks to each and every one.

Such was the interest in floodlight league this year that if we had more courts we would have fielded a 5th team, which could well have been the 2nd strongest team in Class 5 behind our 4ths that won the pennant. This was our strongest collection of floodlight league players in many years.

Finally, I would like to thank the huge number of members who came and gave phenomenal support to the teams on the night. At times the roars were like something from across the road in the Aviva Stadium. It spoke volumes about the tremendous spirit of our club.

Colin