World Squash Day October 2022 with Daryl Selby & Joe Lee
Phew, we’ve just about caught our breath after our tremendously successful World Squash Day event on Saturday 15th October.
We had the pleasure of Daryl Selby and Joe Lee for most of the day and evening treating our junior and senior members with coaching, sharing a court and of course an exciting exhibition match.
Firstly, the professional players took to the court with several juniors to offer coaching tips and ideas. Judging by their faces when they came off court, the juniors clearly had fun and worked hard. Well done to Freddie Jenkins, Henrick Cook, Kian Buckley, Tom Howarth, Ruth Lewis and Finley Dixon.
The next part of the day was the opportunity for some of our more intrepid members to share a court with Joe and Daryl.
Here are some of their comments –
Wayne B - Fantastic to have the opportunity to play two stars of the squash world and to experience at such close quarters how the game should be played!
Matt J - I should have stopped after going 3-0 up!! What a privilege though to get to play Daryl - I think I enjoyed his company as much as the squash - he’s quite a character and a great advocate for the game.
Chris T – It was great fun, my defining comment is probably, ‘that was a long ten minutes’.
Next came the main event. The exhibition match with Daryl and Joe was one of the most entertaining that we have ever had. They were both excellent throughout, and Daryl is definitely a showman and provided so much with the imagination and creativity of his shot play. Daryl is the Mansour Bahrami of the squash world and it was such a privilege to have him entertaining the crowds at RSC.
As you might expect, the scores were very close. Daryl took the first and third games and Joe won the second and fourth games, so it nicely came down to a fifth game which Joe took 11-7.
There were some excellent questions asked by the crowd to the players. Daryl and Joe answered loads of great questions from members for at least half an hour, providing insights into a number of topics including how a professional squash player survives financially, how training needs to be tailored according to a player's age and how the standard of professional squash has increased over the last 10 years and who are the best and worst players to share a room with while on tour. They also mentioned their career highlights and discussed their career plans after retirement - Daryl is planning on working in sports management whereas Joe is leaning towards a career in coaching.
Afterwards everyone enjoyed Mars’ homecooked Thai chicken curry, massaman vegetable curry, noodles, rice and naan bread. A few came back for a second helping and one junior member, who shall remain nameless, even came back for a third plate! We sent Daryl back to Essex with a doggy bag too.
Our heartfelt thanks go to everyone who helped, in particular to Chris Harris, Richard Campbell, Clare Wright, Lisa Pinggera, Sarah Marrington, Mars & Tim Hatari, Andrew Telford, Howard Harding, Simon Fredericks, Mike Parsons, Nick Dunning, Sam Hodgkins & Arthur Cumings.
