Tough task for squash team

Press, 10 July 1979, Page 36

Tough task for squash team

Canterbury will be without its two best players, Rod Hayes and Paul McFadzien, when it meets Queensland in a representative squash match on the Christchurch club’s glass-back court this evening.

With this pair unavailable the consistent University player, Barrie Matthews, will move up into the No. 1 spot and play the top Ausralian amaeur, Frank Donnelly. The other players named in the Canterbury team were Lawrence Skurr, Craig Hibbert and Lindsay Walton. They will have their work cut out to extend their opponents. The Queensland team has already passed through Christchurch on the way to Dunedin where it began its 10-day tour at the week-end in the Southern Districts tournament. Yesterday it played a Southern Districts invitation team at Timaru. Donnelly won the Queensland open title at Brisbane recently after a four-game final with Ross Thorne, another member of the touring team. Also in the side are

Greg Williams, and Kelvin Smith, who lost, 3-2, to Canterbury’s Hayes in the final if the Queensland under-23 championships. The tour winds up in Auckland on July 14 and 15 with contests against the New Zealand colts and Auckland. Hayes is a member of the under-23 team together with Ross Norman, Craig Blackwood and Robin Espie, who will represent New Zealand in the world teams championship at Brisbane in October. The Christchurch club will also be host to two other international fixtures featuring Australian sides this month. The Australian junior girls* team meets the South Island senior women and junior girls there on July 24 and scheduled two days later is the second “test” against the New Zealand juniors. As well, the semi-finals and finals of the $13,000 Ballins international series will be played on the glass-back court on July 21 and 22. The series features the Pakistanis, Mohibullah Khan and Gogi Alauddin, and the New Zealanders, Bruce Brownlee and Murray Lilley.