Yorkshire Squash League: Hallamshire crank up the pressure on leaders Barnsley

While the leaders were battling to a 17-7 home victory over Hull and East Riding, the Sheffield side were winning all their matches against the division’s bottom club.

Brothers Chris and Mark Fuller, Alex Cutts, Jack Alcock and Dan Lawrence dropped only four games in total against Julian Tomlinson, Stuart Macgregor, Mathew Powell, Phil Bowker and Oliver Stanley to cut Barnsley’s advantage to 13 points with five rounds to go.

That was partly due to Yusef Forster’s resounding 3-0 win for Hull and ER over Josh Greaves at fifth string, but further up the order Andy Cockerill, Fi Moverley and Glyn Saunders all took at least one game off Richie Fallows, Ashley Davies and Tom Bamford.

Only Declan James enjoyed a relatively comfortable evening for Barnsley with his straight-games drubbing of Harry Falconer at No 1.

While Barnsley and Hallamshire march away into the distance, Dunnington lead the rest on 166 points, 46 behind Hallamshire.

The defending champions gave their chances of finishing third a big boost with a 20-2 romp at second-bottom Pontefract 2nds.

Chris Simpson, Gareth Lumsdon, Danny Hockborn, Ed Shannon and Matthew Stephenson guaranteed maximum points for the York club by beating Patrick Rooney, George Wileman, Matt Godson, Ben Hodgetts and Sam Todd.

Two points behind Dunnington are Pontefract firsts following their 14-7 victory at Abbeydale.

Although the home side dominated at the top of the order, with Adam Murrills and Matthew Broadberry defeating Alex Hodgetts and Taminder Gata Aura 3-0, Lewis Doughty, Sam Wileman and Katie Smith conceded only one game in the bottom three rubbers against Oli Turner, Andy Mills and Henry Wall.

The tightest contest of the night, though, was at Chapel Allerton, whose 14-8 home triumph over Queens – and the five bonus points for victory – was decided by a single game.

Connor Sheen’s and David Campion’s 3-0 successes against Dom Hamilton and Declan Christie ensured the Leeds team had to go to the wire for their success, which they owed to wins by Malaysian Nafiizwan Adnan, Eddie Charlton and Niall McKinnon over James Earles (3-1), Matt Sidaway (3-1) and David Hymas (3-0).