by Darren Wong
After a four-year absence from the playoff stages, Cardiff Mens Firsts will once again battle it out for promotion to the Premier South division. At the first playoff stage, Cardiff faced King’s College London,┬á the victor going on to face the University of Glamorgan.
CardiffÔÇÖs firsts’ singles player, Dominic Brown breezed past his first competitor 21-8, 21-4 and edged his way past King’s first singles player with a 22-20, 21-14 win. CardiffÔÇÖs second singles player, 39-year-old Huw Bowen, battled his way through a three set thriller against King’s first singles player, winning 14-21, 22-20, 21-18. He carried this great form into the next game and defeated his next opponent 21-5, 21-4.
The first and second doubles pairs; Darren Wong, Richard Townsend and Yee Wai Lim, Teoh Jun Juan, needed to step up and make all their games count. First up was Wong and Townsend, who made a slow start to their first game losing 8-21, 15-21; however they faired far better in their second game. They lost narrowly in the first set 23-25, which saw Wong miss a crucial shot that would have won them the set.
And it looked all over for the Cardiff pair in the second set, where they were losing 17-20, but calm nerves and fantastic low serves saw the pair win five straight points to close out the second set 22-20. Continuing from the previous set, the Cardiff pair dominated the set and pulled away to win 21-14.
CardiffÔÇÖs seconds Yee Wai Lim and Teoh Jun Juan battled fiercely in both of their games against King’s College. Against their first opponents, the Cardiff pair were able to take the first set 21-18, with good attacking play from Lim.
They were unfortunate to lose the next two sets due to a series of unforced errors made by the pair. But Lim and Juan were not about to let this get to them; they started off strong against King’s next pair but unfortunately narrowly lost 18-21. Beautiful smashes from Lim and brilliant net play from Juan ensured a second set victory of 21-17.
The third and final set of the day started out close, but the lead slowly crept away from Cardiff and they faced an uphill struggle to close the gap between them. All the dives and emergency shots that the Cardiff pair were able to pull out, were simply not enough at the end of the day and sadly lost the final set 15-21.  Cardiff will travel to London on Saturday to finish off their tie with Kings College.
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