Amazing Arrows sting unbeaten rivals

Appleby Arrows - 770* vs Wimbourne Wasps - 710

	Wasps	Arrows
Keeper	Brookstanton (C)	Delaney
Chasers	Pippins	Fladbury (C)
	Branstone	Comstock
	Johnston	Applebee
Beaters	Nutt	Flitley
	Oddpick	Belcher
Seeker	Vogler	Sapworthy

There is always something electric about a Wasps-Arrows derby, and not just from the incessant buzzing of the Wimbourne fans, which is always of a special extra volume just for their most hated of opponents.

The Wasps never have reason to alter their winning formula, while the only two changes for Appleby were the return of Beaters Ragmar Flitley and Gifford Belcher, who were rested a fortnight ago against the Cannons.

Appleby’s early season form has been scratchy at best, but they are notoriously slow starters and even more outstandingly on top of their game when it comes to facing the Wasps. Wimbourne came in to the match undefeated and ominous, as deserved clear favourites, but the ingredients were there for the improving Arrows. They were supremely fresh, coming off a bye last week and a canter against Chudley the week earlier, a match in which not only Flitley and Belcher, the most vital star Arrows, were absent, but their experienced however arguably high-maintenance and low-discipline chaser line-up was not stretched beyond practice intensity. Curiously though, Millie Sapworthy (who conventional wisdom suggested was merely standing in for the rested Ava Mustaq) remained in the starting seven. The official owls suggested Mustaq had a suspiciously unspecified injury, but rumours are that Mustaq has fallen out with (and perhaps even duelled) manager Maeve Halcyeone.

As for the match, it did not go entirely as expected. A tight contest was predicted, but as the opening hours passed a pattern emerged, dare we think it, that the Arrows may just have the edge over the Wasps mentally and strategically. The Wasps started like a house on fire, shooting to an early 70-10 lead, but that was as dominant as they got before Violetta Fladbury rallied her Chasers into action.

The irony is for all their hatred of each other, these two teams are more alike than any other pair of teams, which is perhaps why the animosity continues to breed itself. Both teams have efficient and experience Chaser units as opposed to young and unduly athletic flashes in the pan, while relying on their true stars with the Beaters’ Bats in hand to run the show. The similarities even stretch down to the inexperienced and unproven Seekers, the clear weak point of both units.

It was therefore no surprise that the Beater contest was what truly captured the imagination this Friday Night at Ellis Moor. But expectation made it no less captivating. While Gaius Nutt and Gifford Belcher attempted to outmuscle each other, Erasmus Oddpick and Ragmar Flitley were locked in a battle of wits. No clear winner emerged from the contest. Flitley and Belcher perhaps got the decision on points, for they looked over time to be the slightly more dominant physical presence and frustrated Nutt and Oddpick. But they also at times fell into the trap of over-marking their opposite numbers, instead of concentrating on opposition Chasers. Nutt and Oddpick were peerlessly intelligent, retaining their focus primarily on Violetta Fladbury and Cameron Applebee enough to effectively mute them and isolate the very group-formation oriented Rosalind Comstock, consequently neutralizing her effectiveness.

But the Wasps Chasers, particularly the increasingly tempestuous Jadzia Johnston, were having a harder time of it. The Arrows defensive formations and biting counter-attacks forced Wimbourne’s perpetually solid but rarely overly spectacular Chasers onto the back foot. The Arrows were beating the Wasps at their own game, with Flitley and Belcher on the front lines and their Chasers picking up the pieces. Only the discipline of Nutt and Oddpick, as well as the inevitable fortitude of Apollo Brookstanton, kept Wimbourne in touch.

Just before the six hour juncture Appleby hit the front and began to eke out a slight lead, but with the interchanges came a change in momentum as the Wasps’ stronger depth shone through. Wilhelmina Aldermaston led the second Chaser line with aplomb, while Accius Braithwaite stepped seamlessly into the domineering shoes of Gaius Nutt. The Wasps regained the ascendancy, the score consistently evening out in their admittedly narrow favour.

But the Arrows were doing all they needed to, just enough to hold on.

The match was always going come down to the final catch and so it was that the often but too fleetingly genius Venus Vogler’s rocky and unstable platform came back to bite the Wasps, as seemed almost inevitable at one point or another. Millie Sapworthy’s sightings were more regular and definitive and she confirmed Wimbourne’s fears late in the ninth hour with a match-winning tumbling catch.

The sixty point triumph was an extraordinary achievement for the supremely impressive Arrows, who have once and for all laid a genuine marker to League Cup glory.

The Wasps’ lofty ambitions of an undefeated season are lost and they must re-evaluate, both for potential Arrows rematches, and to stay in touch with the Magpies who now sit undisputed on top of the table.

Appleby Arrows - 770: Fladbury 23, Applebee 19, Cauldwell 9, Comstock 6, Croaker 4, McClivert 1, Sapworthy Capture

Wimbourne Wasps - 710: Branstone 26, Aldermaston 20, Pippins 15, Dodderidge 4, Johnston 3, Toots 3

PLAYER OF THE MATCH: VIOLETTA FLADBURY (ARROWS)