Is the match on?  Is it off?  Is the course open?  How much more rain are we expecting?  WhatsApp was red hot, as concerned Seniors frantically tried to work out whether we would play or not.

In the end, with the rain still falling, we gathered in the team room to discover even more confusion.

Brett Vale’s Captain and another of their players were not going to make it. One had been taken to hospital (never did find out why) and one had a tree fall down across his drive during the night and he couldn’t get his car out.

While the visitors frantically tried to make up seven pairs from what they had left, poor old Brian Willsher and John Jardine, our eighth pairing, had their coffee and left for home with no game.

Captain John Parkinson gamely managed to sort out who was playing whom, eventually, and we set off into the rain.

JP was unfazed by the confusion in the ranks, and with partner Brian Roloff they set about their opposition. It turned out closer than they thought however, and it was only thanks to birdies from JP on 16 and 17 that they closed the game out for a 2 and 1 win.  Brian had a nice walk in the drizzle apparently.

Behind them, Dave Seymour and Dick Lumsden were up and down like a pair of tart’s knickers. But although they were only one down after 10, a run of four consecutive pars from their opponents on 11, 12, 13 and 14 saw one down become five down and handshakes all round on the 14th green. A humbling (or humiliating) 5 and 4 defeat.

In Match 3, Andy Cracknell and Trevor Waterhouse strolled to a comfortable 4 and 2 victory. Apparentlythey managed to dovetail beautifully which is an image I can’t now unsee.   And to add some icing on the cake, Trevor also picked up nearest the pin on the 7th.

The mid-table match saw relative new boy Ross Jardine paired with Lionel Hatch. Lionel tried his hardest to put everyone off their game with a string of terrible jokes and it seemed to be working, with the Stoke pairing heading for victory until one of the Brett Vale boys chipped in for a birdie on the 16th to haul them back into it. Lionel furiously upped the level of banter and took it to the 18th where his tactics paid off and we finished with a 1 up win.

The surprise of the day was in Match 5 when our champion bandit Mick Henry was out-banditted (is that a thing?) by a Brett Vale 28 handicapper. He and partner Sir Bob Filer couldn’t match the moustache twirling antics and having gone behind on the first hole, never looked in it, eventually losing out with a 4 and 3 defeat.

Ian McKay and Richard Allen couldn’t have asked for a better start. Teeing up on the 18th, they saw both of their opponents send their balls flying into the lake (oo-er missus). From that gift of a start, they settled into a nice rhythm, never really feeling under pressure. Not from their opponents at any rate…the big frustration was fishing for balls in bunkers throughout the round. Hey ho…they did manage to reel their opponents in and net themselves a 2 and 1 win. (See what I did there?)

Rounding the day off nicely, Mike Clare and Paul Sheffield traded blows with the opposition throughout the front nine, but as they backed each other up nicely on the back nine, they managed to open up a lead and ran out easy winners with a 4 and 3 victory.

So in the end, despite unfounded fears over the weather and the state of the course (it was in pretty good shape actually, even if the rain had slowed the greens down) we managed to avenge our earlier season defeat at their place.

Many thanks to Dick Lumsden on reporting on todays match - thanks Dick.