There was a curious twist in Sunday’s match at Musselburgh where Longniddry were the visitors.

The hosts knew anything other than a win would leave them staring at the abyss of relegation, but with a pair of reverses before the Christmas break confidence wasn’t exactly sky high for the visitors either, and this was always likely to be a close encounter.

But no-one could have predicted quite how close.  In one of the most delicately balanced matches the league has surely ever seen, four out of five matches finished all square with never more than a 1 hole advantage to either side.

The exception came in match 2 where Peter Henderson and David Porteous raced to a 4 hole lead for the visitors, before youngsters Lewis Bain and Connor Good fought back to secure the decisive, in fact the only, win on the seventeenth green.

But even as that match concluded, Longniddry looked set to level the score.  Michael Bacigalupo and Iain Wilson took a 1 hole lead to the final hole in the top tie, and Bacigalupo found the green with a great approach to the long par 4 after Calum Burgess had come up short and left for the home side.  But Burgess was able to make amends when he holed for par after a fine pitch from partner Benn McLeod.  And on the slightly bumpy surface the visiting pair weren’t able to deliver the 2-putt they needed to secure the win.

Then one after the other the remaining matches came up the eighteenth hole only to end in stalemate, leaving Bain and Good as the only winners and Musselburgh surviving to fight another day.

Longniddry won’t have to wait long for their chance for revenge, as the two teams meet again in the Cup next week.