ENGLAND MEN AND WOMEN BOTH QUALIFY FOR FINALS

Colin McQuillan in Vienna 4/28/2000 ©Squashtalk 2000.

A Greek Story in Croyden...

[latest men's draw] [latest women's draw]

England strides into both finals...

The headline news is that England is in both European Team Squash Championship finals in Vienna.

Not too surprising. They have only missed one final, the 1992 match in which Scotland's men beat Finland, since the championships began back in 1973. The English women have never lost since the 1978 inauguration of the women's European Championship.

This year, for the fifth time in a row, the Germans have made it to the final. They include an army medic, a lawyer and a coaching pro among their number and they don't stand a chance against the well oiled professional machine led by world champion Cassie Campion.

Swedish Ghosts

The English men lost to Sweden in the finals of 1980 and 1983, and to the Scots in the 1992 semi-finals. Today's Swedes are pale shadows of that adventurous group that travelled the world behind the unforgettable Lasr Kvant in the 1980s. They play Italy for ninth place today, and they won't necessarily win.

The Scots can't even sort themselves out enough to send world champion Peter Nicol and his high-ranking mates to give the English another scare similar to the one they managed in last year's European men's final. They preferred to save the money and not send a mens team that was not guaranteed first place. Their women went down bravely to Germany in the women's semi-finals .

French on the upswing

But the French have arrived in their first men's final. Led by Thierry Lincou, the first Frenchman to break into the world top ten, and wonderfully reinforced at fourth string by the new European Junior Champion , Gregory Gaultier, they have hardly missed the Gallic talents of Julien Bonetat, although what they would be like with him playing in the middle order along with Renan Lavigne and Jean Michel Arcucci, is a tantalising thought.. They were good enough in the semi-finals to put the Finns out by the time Lincou had won a single game of his first string match against Olli Touminen and they might just have been holding something back when they lost 4-0 to England in the pool rounds.

Greco-Irish Twist

But the strength of this England squad came home to me today when I watched them standing behind a fabulously stubborn losing performance from Paul Gregory in a Greco-Irish battle for 13th place. Gregory is a former British National Champion. He beat Simon Parke in the 1991 British Final after taking Peter Marshall out for a dodgy hamburger that kept the famous doublehander out of the semi-finals with food poisoning,

Among the English squad in Vienna both Parke and Marshall have since won the British title, as have Paul Johnson and Del Harris. Standing with them behind Gregory's court was Paul Carter, the 1988 British Champion who is now a national coach. Six British Champions enjoying the same match, along with all the old European Championship hands who have learned to look out for Gregory on one of his stubborn days.

Aged 32 and shaven headed these days, the Croydon based Gregory, or Gregolopolous as his buddies call him, transferred to his father's Greek antecedents as soon as it became apparent in early 1990s that there was a rich crop of blonde blue-eyed players all too likely to hear the England call before him. He has flourished as the Greek number one, or Greek God as he prefers to think of himself, ever since.

In the early days he travelled the circuit boasting a flowing black mane of hair and favouring a long black overcoat that would not have looked out of place in Chicago circa 1924. Now he looks as if he might be casting for a role in the remake of Papillon, but his stubborn 'never give an inch' style of play has not altered one jot.

Ryan Struggles, Gregopolous earns the cheers

Derek Ryan thought he had things sewn up when he went two games up for Ireland, but the Greek God had that look about him that I first saw 15 years ago when he kept Phil Kenyon, also a British Champion at the time, on court for more than two hours after trailing 0-2 in a National League deciding rubber deep in Sussex, England. Inexorably the tide turned against Ryan in Vienna just as it had against Kenyon in Sussex.. Two up became 2-1 and then 2-2. He won in the end 9-6 in the fifth and Ireland will face Denmark for 13th place in the last round of play while Greece tries for 15th against Slovenia. But it took the lanky Irish number one 13 rallies to get past 7-5 in that last game and two match balls to clinch the match from 8-6. And it was Gregolopolous who got the standing ovation at the end, and not least from the five fellow British Champions who delayed their semi-final against Wales to enjoy the feast.

They went off for revenge over the Welsh, who you may recall beat them in the semi-finals of the World Team Championships late last year. Like the French, they did all the spade work through Harris and Mark Chaloner in the lower order. By the time Johnson had booked five points in his opening game against Alex Gough and Parke had garnered three from David Evans, the rest of the semi-final was redundant.

On the Knowledge

Parke was even able to resist the example of the Greek God and let the rest of the first string match run away to the man who had cut him to pieces in the World event and was , as they say, well due a pasting in revenge. "I was surprised he could do that," said Gregory later. "If it had been me, I would have had a spat with the referee, or got a bad bounce, or taken against the colour of the Welsh shirt, and gone hell for leather. The next day would be the last thing on my mind. "This is the Greek way, you know." Of course, some Greek ways are more Greek than other Greek ways. Gregolopolous is currently 'on the knowledge', as they say of trainee London taxi drivers, so his concentration is a bit more Croydon than Corinthian these days.

"He's probably the best cabbie in world squash," laughed Marshall as he watched last night's match And the Greek third string in Vienna bears an uncanny resemblance to Amanat Khan, the highly skilled son of Pakistan's Torsam Khan, the elder brother of the mighty Jahangir, who died from a heart attack on a court in Adelaide back in the 1970s. But the best Greek is a real Greek. Nikos Moustroufis is 42 years of age, has played in 18 European Championships and earned more than 100 caps for his country. He lost to Steve Richardson in the Irish match but he was probably pencilled in for the Slovenia match on the last day. And you can bet he will be up for selection next year. "That's the way we Greeks are," repeated the shaven pated Greek God from Croydon. "You just can't stop us, wherever we come from."

Men's semi-finals:
[1] ENGLAND bt [2] WALES 3-1
Simon Parke lost to David Evans 5-9 6-9 3-9
Paul Johnson bt Alex Gough 5-9 9-0 9-0 9-3
Del Harris bt Gareth Davies 9-1 9-0 9-1
Mark Chaloner bt Gavin Jones 9-2 9-1 9-2

[4] FRANCE bt [3] FINLAND 4-0
Thierry Lincou bt Olli Tuominen 9-4 5-9 9-2 9-1
Renan Lavigne bt Juha Raumolin 7-9 10-8 9-0
Jean-Michel Arcucci bt Timo Tuominen 9-5 9-3 9-6
Gregory Gaultier bt Janne Kyttanen 9-5 9-3 9-7

5-8 play-offs:
[5] GERMANY bt [7] SWITZERLAND 4-0
Oliver Kowalski bt Lars Harms 9-7 2-9 9-4 9-0
Simon Frenz bt Reto Donatsch 9-2 9-0 9-2
Edgar Schneider bt Andre Holderegger 9-1 9-3 9-6
Stefan Oppolzer bt Dany Oeschger 9-4 9-5 9-2

[10] NETHERLANDS bt [8] AUSTRIA 2-2 (9-8 in games)
Lucas Buit bt Clemens Wallishauser 9-5 9-2 9-2
Tommy Berden bt Gerhard Schedlbauer 3-9 9-3 9-2 2-9 9-2
Ronald Cune lost to Leopold Czaska 9-7 1-9 3-9 5-9
Gabor Marges lost to Wolfgang Rothbacher 9-6 9-7 6-9 2-9 4-9

9-12 play-offs: [13] Italy bt [9] Belgium 3-1, [6] Sweden bt [11] Spain 3-1 13-16 play-offs: [14] Denmark bt [20] Slovenia 4-0, [12] Ireland bt [15] Greece 4-0 17-20 play-offs: [18] Israel bt [17] Czech Republic 3-1, [16] Hungary bt [19] Slovakia 4-0

Women's semi-finals:
[1] ENGLAND bt [3] NETHERLANDS 3-0
Cassie Campion bt Vanessa Atkinson 9-0 9-7 9-0
Linda Charman bt Daphne Jelgersma 9-6 9-1 9-0
Tania Bailey bt Bea Dreu-Spitse 9-0 9-1 9-0 [2]

GERMANY bt [4] SCOTLAND 2-1
Sabine Schoene bt Pamela Nimmo 9-4 9-2 9-4
Sabine Baum lost to Senga Macfie 7-9 0-9
Daniela Grzenia bt Claire Waddell 0-9 9-5 9-1 5-9 9-6

5-8 play-offs:
[6] SPAIN bt [8] SWITZERLAND 2-1
Natalia Meneu lost to Agnes Mueller 1-9 0-9 5-9
Elisabeth Sado bt Manuela Zehnder 9-5 9-1 5-9 9-7
Laia Sans bt Gaby Schmohl 10-8 10-8 10-8

[5] DENMARK bt [10] FRANCE 2-1
Ellen Petersen bt Isabelle Stoehr 9-6 10-8 9-0
Julia Dorn-Jensen lost to Corinne Castets 3-9 9-4 7-9 2-9
Line Hansen bt Mylene Demuylder 9-3 9-2 10-8

9-12 play-offs: [12] Ireland bt [9] Wales 2-1, [7] Belgium bt [14] Italy 3-0 13-16 play-offs: [18] Israel bt [16] Hungary 3-0, [13] Finland bt [15] Norway 2-1 17-19 play-offs: [11] Austria bt [15] Slovakia 3-0, [11] Austria bt [17] Slovenia 3-0, [15] Slovakia bt [17] Slovenia 2-1.