No more elitism in men’s squash

Press, 10 March 1987, Page 31

No more elitism in men’s squash

Men’s open grade will revert to four players a side for the Canterbury Squash Rackets Association’s inter-club competitions this winter. After a two-year experiment of an elite grade, with only three players in each team, the move was decided upon. The number of teams will stay at eight. The match committee convener, Murray Withers, said that with three members a team too many ties were not played competitively enough. Several results

were virutally pre-de-cided. Interest will be added by the inclusion of two promotion - relegation rounds between the men’s open grade and division one. They will be followed by division into pools and then play-offs. The eight starting open teams are likely to be Bumside, Christchurch (2), Christchurch Football, High School Old Boys, Lancaster Park, Linwood and Sumner. Among the strongest will be Lancaster Park, which has gained the 1983 and 1985 New Zealand world championship representative, Paul Viggers, from Sumner. That will allow Park the luxury of having another nationally ranked player, Robbie Burnett, at No. 2 once he returns from late summer inter-club in Perth. This pair will be backed up by Brett Hibbert and Michael Penman. Pushing that side strongly will be the Christchurch club which is expected to have its top two players, Rod Hayes and Elliott Jones, in the same team. Hayes, a team-mate of Viggers for the 1983 world championships, has returned to his home city and old club after a few years in Auckland. Unfortunately Adrian Casey is transferring to Invercargill. Among the gains are Lyn Sparks at High School Old Boys and Craig Thompson at Linwood. Last year’s champion side,

Bumside, has lost its No. 1, Mark Crosbie. The women’s open grade will stick to the format of six teams with four players in each. Lancaster Park, having gained the talented Toni Bird, and one or two others, might field two teams with the others likely to be Christchurch, Mount Pleasant, St Andrew’s (replacing Linwood) and Sumner. The first 10 weeks of competition will be for the President’s Rosebowl with two teams from division one then promoted for pool play. All grades from men’s division two down and women’s division one down will go back up to 12 teams this season with divisions into pools after the first full round, There will be play-offs at the end of round two and there will be automatic promotion-relegation for grades other than men’s division 7, 11 and 15. The total number of teams entered is likely to be about the same or a little bit down on last year’s figure of 282. The number of grades is likely to decrease by three for men’s inter-club and two for women’s. At the conclusion of the normal inter-club competition, which gets under way on April 6, there will be a top team event conducted among the various clubs. This year there will be two divisions, the second one for D-graders and below.