One of the fiercest rivalries in the league, this promised to be a tasty encounter. Border Reivers 2s looked to reverse the 15-8 scoreline in the match at Livingston in November and despite absence of Top Seed Alan Jobes, border Reivers 2s went in fairly strong.
The match kicked off with Reivers Darren Quinn squaring off against Pete Docherty and Youngster Jimmy Munro tackling the Deer Park Veteran Andy Duff. Deer Park had switched the 4+5 seeds form the previous encounter – in that one Munro beat Docherty 3-0 and Quinn squandered a 2-0 lead to go down 3-2 to Duff.
But the switch done the West Lothianers no favours as The Borderers won BOTH rubbers this time. Both Docherty and Duff tried there best to break the games up and challenged several referee decisions. But the Borderers, who were getting wise to their oppositions mind games now just maintained focus and overcame the distractions.
Munro Cleaned up fairly quickly against Duff, 15-9, 15-12, 15-10 and Quinn, who had a bit of a stop-start encounter took it 3-1 (15-4, 12-15, 15-8, 15-9) against Docherty.
Del Sharratt was up next against Deer Park Newbie Jamie McNamee. Sharratt had never encountered McNamee before so really didn’t know what to expect. Sharratt just treated the match like any other and focussed on his own game; Sharratt’s forte was the Full length drives which limited the shots McNamee could play and gave Sharratt that extra fraction of a second to prepare for the next shot. Sharratt took this 15-8, 15-2, 15-9 for 3-0 and meant deer Park couldn’t win the match as there were only two ties left.
The Closest match of the night was Iain Gorman (BR2) v Gary Holmes (DP2) the first two Games went in favour of the Reivers 15-8, 15-12 bur Holmes started reading Gormans served and produced several volley returns that proved successful and won 18-16. But Gorman managed to see the game out 15-8 for a 3-1 win. The Event culminated in the tussle of the top seeds and Iain Laing took a 3-0 Victory away against Walid Magby to give the borderes a clean sweep and a convincing 18-2 victory.