Poor performance 'key' to Aldeburgh loss

In the unusual surroundings of playing on a Saturday morning, the Aldeburgh team met up at local rivals and fellow Deben Divisional contenders, Golden Key @ Snape.

The Aldeburgh team were unbeaten whilst the Snape side had yet to lose at home this season, so in some ways a draw was looking likely on paper. Unfortunately our sport is played on gravel rather than paper and any sort of form guide counted for nothing.

Yes the Mill team were putting in a poor performance but at the same time, a great home performance throughout by the Golden Key saw them home by inflicting the biggest defeat of Aldeburghs short history, by the tune of 4-0.

The mornings match started with Simon and Lewis playing on the top piste and falling by a score of 13-8. On the more traditional lower piste, Jimmy & Tina went down by the score of 13-1, so two-nil down at the halfway point and an uphill task lay ahead.

Tina and Simon took the bottom piste in the second half and whilst 9-3 down at one point turned the game around to 11-9 to Aldeburgh by playing long cochs, but then a poor short 6 metre coch was their downfall as the Key easily coasted in for the 4 points they needed and still had 2 boules in hand.

By then news had already filtered down the piste that Jimmy & Lewis had been equally unsuccessful at the top end and had gone down 13-9, making it a clean sweep for the Snape side.

Well cheered on by the rest of their squad, the Golden Key only need to beat Thorpeness Dolphin on Sunday to snatch the Deben Division whilst a loss or draw could mean that Aldeburgh would then need to be Aldringham in their final match on September 5th to secure the title.

No-one likes losing but today we were outplayed by a much better and improved side.