The Shepparton District Tennis Association finals are at last upon us, and clubs had themselves one last chance to jostle for spots as knockouts loomed large.
McEwen Reserve Gold entered the final weekend of the regular season maintaining faint hopes of finding a way to cling onto third or fourth spot in sitting fifth, but had a tough ask in taking on a dominant Shepparton North side.
North had nothing to play for mathematically - but would you have been able to tell from watching this clash? Absolutely not.
In one of two A1 division clashes set for the evening of Valentine’s Day on Friday, love - in a tennis sense - was firmly in the air as North won no fewer than four of the nine sets 6-0.
Helen Jackson had the strength of fortune to be involved in two of those, conceding just two games for the whole night with North notching its fourth win on the bounce in thorough and ruthless fashion, sweeping Gold 9-54 to 0-13.
It’s not that Lemnos and Karramomus were to know Gold would be exiting the top-four race with that defeat at the time, but third and fourth were to be sorted between those two clubs in the other Friday clash.
It was certainly more competitive overall, but Thomas Jeffery had a huge hand in steering the hosts on track early in the north-east with two comprehensive set wins to start things off.
It was tough going for Karramomus down the stretch, taking two out of the first seven rubbers with both coming only by 6-5 margins, and three-for-three days out of Jeffery and Wendy McHugh brought home the chocolates for Lemnos in a 6-49 to 3-26 win.
With those matters out of the way, Saturday was due to bring us a game between bottom-placed Central Park and second-ranked McEwen Reserve Red, but it never got started.
Thankfully, though, Friday’s results had rendered the encounter a mathematical moot point, with no positions due to change.
A2 action brought in a pair of expected results as top sides Karramomus and St Andrews continued to rubber-stamp themselves as the leading contenders.
By quite similar scorelines, the two top outfits took six of nine sets in their respective hitouts as Karramomus secured the top seed one game clear.
A1 finals will take place on Friday night, with Shepparton North to meet Karramomus and McEwen Reserve taking on Lemnos at a venue to be announced.
A2 finals, meanwhile, will fire up in the regular Saturday afternoon timeslot before both grand finals are held the following weekend.
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