Duffield Squash Club is located on the main street of the small Derbyshire village that nestles between Derby and Matlock. It's a members' club with five courts and 600 members and shares its facilities with Duffield Tennis Club.

Brian Hargrave has been looking after their National and Premier league team for ever, it seems, and has been secretary at the club since 1998, and heavily involved in all its activities for many years before that.

When we arrived Brian, clearly and rightly proud of his club, gave us a guided tour, and as the evening wore on introduced us to many of the members and personalities of the club.

What shone through all of this is how proud, how enthusiastic, how unselfish everyone involved with Duffield is. The club is rich – both in the sense that it's not short of funds, but also in that it gains so much by having so many people dedicate hours and hours of time to it for free. You get the feeling of being invited in to join a close-knit family, so different from some of the more modern centres which can sometimes feel a little soul-less.

You certainly couldn't describe Duffield that way, and so rather than the usual 'En Bref', we'd like to introduce you to the Duffield Family ...

Colin the Fan:

Colin is a lifelong Derby County and Duffield fan who runs the club's internal leagues and looks after the booking sheets.

Members book using a sticker system and the cost is just £1 per court off-peak and £2 per court during peak times.

Mike the Chairman:

Mike has been chairman of the Squash Club for six years now. He plays mainly racketball, but still carries on with squash doubles every monday ... just like he has for the past 30 years! “I was never up to Brian's standard,” he quipped ...

Clive the President (ex):

“1976-05” the honours board proudly proclaims against Clive's name. He joined in 1955, was chucked out (for 'bar trouble and overindulgence' in 1957, was readmitted in 1958 and has been on the Committee ever since, being chairman for many years before taking on the Presidency, which he 'officially' relinquished tonight.

During that time he, along with Kevin White's dad, engineered the rise from one to two, to three, to four, and to five courts.

“When we started on the second court we had to take out an old wooden tennis pavilion to make room. Contractors were brought in and one day on my way to work I saw plumes of smoke rising from the club. The contractors had removed the felt from the roof, tried to burn it and set fire to the the whole pavilion. The good news is that it put us seven weeks ahead of schedule!

“We've never needed to go outside for funds, apart from one small building society loan all the money for the development of the club has been put up by the members. We now clear about £1000 a court each year which enables us to maintain them and to continue to add to the facilities.

“We almost moved in 1971. We had an offer for the land of almost £1 million, and along with the tennis club were negotiating with Chevin Golf Club to move there, building new facilities. After many meetings we all turned up to rubber stamp the deal on the day the Daily Telegraph had the headline “Derby Ghost Town: Rolls Royce Crash.”

“The chairman thought we should put it on hold, the vote went six for, six against and he had the casting vote. So that was the end of that, and I don't think we'll ever want to move from here now.

”My biggest disappointment is not getting together with the tennis club. We share so much, we really should have merged under one management. I sincerely hope they do in the future.”

Clive hung up his racket four years ago at the age of 72 - “my lungs packed up through smoking”. In his playing days he represented the County and won a half-blue at Cambridge (apparently squash only qualifies as half a sport!).

Michael the oddjob man:

Michael was the stand-in barman for tonight, as one of the regulars was off ill (all the bar staff at Duffield are volunteers).

“I started playing squash at 16 and I'm still trying to get the hang of it. I have coaching with our assistant coach, but most of the time she just shouts at me!

“I live just round the corner, so it's lovely to be able to just wander down and watch the top players in Premier League squash, they're so good and their shots are just unbelievable.”

Ashley the Compere:

“Brian came back from a league match at Edgbaston enthused with the performance of their compere, and wanted someone to do something along those lines for us. Since I'd been on Radio Derby for many years Brian picked on me to do the job, and I've been doing it for eight years now.”

Ashley, after 22 years at the BBC, now works for Saga Radio and is also a photographer for Derbyshire Life and Countryside. He's branching out, and several of his photos, transposed onto canvas, were on display at the club. “If you like them come and see me, if you don't they're nothing to do with me,” was how he introduced them to the crowd before the player introductions.

Felix the Sponsor:

The team is called Benz Bavarian Duffield, and that's due to the generosity of Felix Frixou, who owns the local Mercedes and BMW specialist dealership. He's been sponsoring the National League team for nine years, and also helps out the local juniors, and is starting to get involved in tennis sponsorship - “squash is still my passion, but it's nice just to be able to put something back into the community.”

Felix is a Cypriot with a Liverpool accent (don't ask), and his passion for squash extends to playing, in fact he's a gold medal winner with Cyprus in last year's European Small Nations Championship.

“It was great to have the event played in Cyprus, it's getting bigger and better every year and although it's covered excellently locally it could do with a bit more general publicity [don't worry, we've already got Felix lined up to report for us this year!].

“There are lots of up and coming players in Cyprus so for me the hardest part was to get into the team, and winning the team gold was a bonus!”

Felix, whose parents know those of tennis champion Marcos Baghdatis very well, was, like all Cypriots, following the recent Australian Open tennis closely.

“Everybody's really passionate about their sport in Cyprus, the government offered to fly out all of his family for the finals and most of them went. He did brilliantly – my only regret is that I'm no longer the favourite son of Cyprus!”

Duffield should be glad that Felix has transferred all of that passion to the squash club ... long may it continue.

Paul the Coach

There's been a spectacular growth in Racketball at Duffield in the last few years.

Out of 600 members around 200 play the game, and about 100 play racketball only, most of whom would have packed in by now if it hadn't been for that big blue ball ...

So, having met "The Duffield Family", I'm sure you can see why this club has such a reputation.
Take it from me, it's well worth a visit ...

Steve Cubbins