Great Britain coach John Leach has admitted that his side’s pride will be on the line when they face world champions Spain in tomorrow’s final Group A fixture.
The British claimed their first victory of the XVI World Championships thanks to Christian Murphy and Sam Jones but were once again bettered in the pool stages, this time 2-1 by Uruguay.
Now they are playing to salvage their dignity against the multiple world champions, and the favourites to claim a second successive world title in Dubai.
Leach opted to deploy the same team pairings which had lost to Portugal in the opener, meaning the Team GB No.1 pairing of Murphy and Jones once again took to the court when the tie was already dead.
It was a throw of the dice and with the second pairing of Sandy Farquharson and Nikhil Mohindra having wrestled control of the second match when 5-3 and a break up in the first set, it seemed it was about to pay off, before a case of déjà vu ripped defeat from the jaws of victory.
Now GB will almost certainly have to qualify for the next world champs while also looking to stave off potential humiliation against Spain.
None of which was lost on Leach as he admitted: “It is always tough in terms of what players you put in and what numbers you deploy them at and tonight it didn’t go in our favour and that is international sport but it is hard to take.
“I trusted all three pairs to win their matches and we were extremely close in that second match for sure. We were a break up 5-3 in the first set and a break up 5-2 in the second but the opposition raised their level and the boys are devastated.
“It was really hard to take but we have to take these moments and learn from them to improve the team.”
Now another sleepless night awaits Leach as he wrestles with a selection dilemma for tomorrow’s 12pm UK start, but of one thing the British head coach is sure – it will not be hard to get his team up for the challenge.
Leach said: “It doesn’t get better in terms of padel in playing the very best players in the world at the World Championships and that is what we face tomorrow in meeting Lebron and co.
“These are players that our guys and especially the younger ones look up to, so this will be an amazing experience and one we must take everything we can from.
“In that respect I will make my selection decision after practice tomorrow morning and see how the players have responded.
“But regardless of your position in the group you do play-off so no matter what happens against Spain we would have been playing off for position and that is still the case.”
The opening honours were once again entrusted to Louie Harris and Richard Brooks who faced Martin Araujo and Diego Ramos, and the British duo made a bright start immediately racking up two break points on the opening Uruguayan service game only to see their opponents deft defensive skills allow them to recover.
With Harris then broken the tables were soon turned and it was the South Americans who took the opening set 3-6 with something to spare.
It was to be a case of more of the same in the second set with the British culpable of passing up a further three break points while their opponents once again took the set with a single break 6-4.
Although the opening match had been a source of frustration, worse was to come. The combination of experience and youth offered by the Sandy Farquharson and Nikhil Mohindra pairing wasn’t enough to prevail in a super-tight first set which ended 7-5, the British managing a single break to their opponents’ double; the Uruguayans winning a total of 40 points to the Team GB total of 37 – underlining how tight it had been.
In the second, superb defence by the determined Farquharson allowed Mohindra to superbly thread the needle on the backhand side to hand the British a 4-2 lead that looked decisive.
Yet it was not to be and serving for the set at 5-3 Farquharson was broken and after the South Americans held it was Mohindra who was to pass up serve and when a fourth successive game was lost it was all over 5-7, 5-7 after 1 hour 26 minutes.
Despite the fact that the brutal implication of the second match loss was that Team GB would almost certainly have to qualify once again for the next World Championship the no.1 pairing of Christian Murphy and Sam Jones went out to ‘bat’ with fire clearly still in their bellies.
Unbelievably just 46 minutes later they had claimed a 6-1, 6-1 victory that handed Team GB their first victory of the World Championships and at last gave the Brits something tangible to build on.
Murphy said: “We were unlucky with the first two matches but we gave it our best in this final match and we are pleased to get the win and now we must go again to face the World Champions Spain.
“We know how strong they are but we must focus on producing our best performances across all three pairings and see where that takes us.”
