Tennis: Archer hoping for another productive cup campaign

DERBYSHIRE'S men bid to keep up their fine Winter County Cup form of recent years at Nottingham this weekend.

The county team have earned promotion in the last two years, moving up from Division 5 to Division 3B, and non-playing captain Denis Archer is confident further progress can be made this time round.

Archer will field a strong – if not his strongest – team for the three-day event, which starts tomorrow at the Nottingham Tennis Centre.

He will be without the services of Chris Simpson, who is playing in the World Junior Championship at the Orange Bowl in Miami, Anthony Davidson, studying at university in America, and Dave Horton, who will not make the trip back from Sterling University.

However, in Chris Archer, Ashley Broomhead, Dan Cottier, Richard Harrison, Simon Thornewill and the Rushby brothers, Tom and James, he believes he will have sufficient firepower to gain one of the two promotion places.

He said: "In this competition, you are never quite sure who the other teams will bring.

"They are probably in a similar situation to us, with one or two missing, but I think we have a good enough team to put up a good account of ourselves.

"We go into the competition a bit more in the dark but we have a good record in the event, which is the winter equivalent of County Week.

"We have won promotion for the last two years so we're hoping that we can keep that up.

"It's a very good venue and quite close to home, which is a bonus, so there is an opportunity for people to go along and see some high quality tennis."

Derbyshire's group also contains Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Hampshire.

The matches will be fought out over six singles and three doubles rubbers.

Derbyshire's women will also be in Winter County Cup action, in Group 5B, at Tipton. They will face Northamptonshire, Shropshire and Herefordshire & Worcestershire.