We must keep our heads up, says Mills

Mills and co played host to the University of Nottingham at Oakgrove Leisure Centre on Monday night looking to pick up their first win of the current campaign.

But instead it proved to be a third consecutive loss on the bounce as the visitors wrapped up a 4-1 win on the night.

By the time Mills and his men’s doubles partner Sean Vendy took to the court in the fifth event, the University of Nottingham had already built up an unassailable 3-1 lead.

It had looked like Mills and Vendy would take a late consolation when they battled back from two games down but Adam Hall and Adam Cwalina came good in the tie-break to win 9-8, 9-6, 7-9, 8-9, 4-1.

“We’re very disappointed really not to have won that, I’d have liked a 3-2 win to MK Badminton because I feel like we could have taken them on in doubles,” he said.

“Obviously, if it goes to five sets you know it’s a close game and going into the ladies doubles I thought we had a chance in that as well, unfortunately we’ve not taken either of them.

“I’m disappointed for the team right now and hopefully that will push into some motivation for the next game to make sure we get a few.

“It’s not been the season we wanted so far, we haven’t got a win on the board so that’s concerning.

“This time last year we’d had two wins but that is this scoring system that’s set up, you never know one game can make a difference, one point can make a difference, we lost a set 9-8 there and if we’d have taken that we would have won in the fourth set rather than going to the fifth so, anything can happen.”

The night started poorly for the hosts in the men’s singles with Eric Pang taking an early victory for the University of Nottingham against Sam Parsons with the MK Badminton man unable to find his rhythm and eventually falling 9-4, 9-8, 9-5.

MK Badminton did get themselves on the board in the next match thanks to the efforts of Sophie Sankey and Anders Kristiansen who used the powerplay to great effect to seal victory 9-4, 8-9, 9-3, 9-7 against Ellen Mahenthiralingam and Rohan Midha.

The University of Nottingham came back strong though thanks to the experience of Yao Jie who produced an assured performance to see off the challenge of Caroline Westley 9-5, 9-2, 9-8 and give Jess Pugh and Cherly Seinen a shot at victory.

They made no mistake and the University of Nottingham put the icing on the cake in the final event of the night.

Mills added: “We’ve got two tough games coming up against Loughborough and Derby who are both really strong teams.

“Derby won the event last year and Loughborough always have a strong team regardless of who they’ve got out they’ve got a very in depth squad.

“So we’re just going to have to look and try and get as many games as we can against them in the next two matches.”

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