Queensland easily beats Canterbury

Press, 11 July 1979, Page 6

Queensland easily beats Canterbury

sport ,

The touring Queensland men’s squash team showed little evidence of any difficulty adjusting to tile much colder South Island courts when it easily overcame Canterbury, 4-0. at Chester Street last evening.

Led by the top Australian amateur, Frank Donnelly, Queensland did not concede a game in any of the matches and al] of them were over in less than 30 min.

Canterbury was seriously’ weakened without its two best players, Rod Hayes and Paul McFadzien, but still put up quite a bit of, resistance—though a number of the efforts petered out in the third game. Easily the best match of the night was the last—between the brilliant Donnelly and Barrie Matthews, who had been promoted to the hot spot and fought boldly for 26min. In the first game Matthews went within an ac e of holding a game ball after recovering earlier from 0-4 down to lead 6-5. However, three virtual winners at 8-8 were all returned by the Australian and the chance went begging Features of this game were one superb stop volley by Donnellv and a rallv which Matthews won well, after forcing his opponent into two successive desperate backwall boasts out of the backhand corner.

Donnelly cut down on bls errors to win the second with four points in a row from 5-4 and then opened out to lead 4-1 in the third. The Canterbury University player came back well to level at 6-6 but could not maintain control. The Australian’s main assets were his remarkable retrieving ability, his deceptiveness, a few crunching forehand drives and some gut wrenching boasts. In the match between the number threes. Greg Williams, a bearded left-hander, was too

steady for Craig Hibbert who lost 22 points in a row after a good start had him leading 4-0 in the first. Hibbert played extremely well in stages of the first game, which, lasted 13min —easily the longest of the night. From then on though, while Williams kept the rallies going, Hibbert was a little error-prone and often put the ball down when he had worked himself into a position up front to hit a winner, Lawrence Skurr, exuding confidence initially twice went into a winning position in the first two games against the Queensland No. 2, Ross Thorne. He led 6-0 in the first and 7-4 in the second only to lose them without winning another point as Thorne’s full array of shots were unwrapped. During some early rallies Thorne’s fancy shots failed to come off. In the third game, though, he was in complete control and only relinquished the serve twice as he showed all his skills. The Queensland No. 4. Kelvin Smith, who had lost to Canterbury’s Hayes in his state’s under 23 championships recently found no such tough opposition In Lindsay Walton last evening. Walton wa s all at sea in the first game and folded in just 3J min., taking only two rallies with Smith hitting a succession of winning drop shots. The Canter bury player’s struggle was a little more rewarding in the second game when he hit some nice winners but in the third Smith was completely dominant. Results (Queensland names first):— F. Donnellv beat B D Matthews. 10-8. 94, 9-6: R. Thorne beat L. P. Skurr. 9-6. 9-7. 9-2; G. Williams beat C. Hibbert, 9-4, 9-0 9-1; K. Smith beat L. Walton, 9-0, 9-4. 9-3.