By David Murphy
The inaugural Anglo-Hibernian cup is a parastanding team tennis event contested between Ireland and England that was held in the Bidston tennis centre in Liverpool on the 8th and 9th November.
Each team picked 5 of their best parastanding players to compete over 2 days in both singles and doubles matches. Representing Ireland were David Murphy, Alex Morrogh, Cormac Goodman, Katie Morrissey and Michael Beglan. Each player was to play one singles match and two doubles matches with 10 matches played overall.
The 5 singles matches took place on Saturday morning and afternoon, with Ireland leading 3-2 after their completion. Special mention must go to Cormac Goodman who won his match from a set down, winning with some clutch tennis to secure the championship tiebreak and earning what would be a crucial point for Ireland.
Saturday afternoon also staged the first doubles match with myself and Michael Beglan taking on last year’s PST doubles world champions Ross Cudmore and Matt Grover in a closely fought contest. Unfortunately, despite winning the second set, myself and Michael couldn’t secure the point for our team, losing in the championship tiebreak and leaving the scores level at 3 matches a piece at the end of the day’s play.
We returned to the Bidston academy on Sunday morning with the scores on a knife edge all set for the 4 remaining doubles matches. Again there was little separating the teams. Ireland were 5-4 up with the last doubles being played between the pairings of Alex Morrogh and Cormac Goodman against Georgia Routledge and England team captain Mat Johnstone. With the trophy on the line, the match was excruciatingly tense and of course it ended up in yet another championship tiebreak. Alex and Cormac played great tennis but were just edged out 10-8 in a dramatic finish, leaving the teams deadlocked at 5 matches all.
It had been decided between the teams and officials that in the event of a tie the captains would nominate a pair from each team to play a championship tiebreak so that there would be an outright winner of the inaugural trophy.
As expected, Matt Grover and Ross Cudmore were selected to represent the England team while I selected Michael Beglan and Katie Morrissey for Ireland. Michael and Katie started the tiebreak brilliantly and at 5-2 up against last year’s world doubles champions I was nearly congratulating myself on my inspired captains picks before Grover and Cudmore began to wrestle control of the tiebreak. 5-2 seemed in the blink of an eye to flip to 7-9 with two points for the trophy for England. This was the point where Michael and Katie showed their mettle. A searing return down the line from Michael was parried by Grover at net before Katie put away a winner. Michael delivered two super first serves at 8-9 and 9-9, forcing return errors by cleverly changing the pace on his kick serve. Then on our match point Katie delivered a super deep cross court backhand return that forced an error and handed Ireland the inaugural Anglo-Hibernian cup.
The deciding tie break was really an exciting and fitting ending to a competition where the two teams were well matched and could not be separated by the end of the 10 matches. The games were fiercely competitive but also played in a great spirit.
Being part of this Irish team for this competition was special. So often tennis is seen as a solitary sport but this format allows for the fostering of team spirit which means that you get to share together in the victories as well as the defeats. Even during the singles matches the sense of support from team mates courtside was palpable. The strength and depth of our team was displayed in the way that each member of the Irish team contributed a point to the team total.
Many thanks must go to Cheshire LTA for hosting the tournament and Neil Bates and Jean Beglan for running the competition. And thanks also to Tennis Ireland for all their support and promotion of Parastanding tennis.
We look forward to hosting the England team in Ireland next year for the reverse fixture where we can hopefully retain the Anglo-Hibernian cup.
