There is a particular sound a squash club makes when it is alive.
It is not the thud of the ball, nor the squeak of trainers against wooden floors. It is the murmur - the low, constant hum of people who have nowhere else they want to be. The clink of pint glasses. The collective inhale at 9–9 in a deciding game.
For years, in too many English clubs, that sound has been fading.
On certain Saturdays now across the North of England, it has returned.
MatchPoint — an amateur graded squash tour founded in 2024 by Cai Younger — has not so much reinvented English squash as remembered it. Across a loose constellation of clubs from Newcastle to Manchester, from Bedale to Jesmond, it has revived something that had begun to feel fragile: the idea that club squash could be competitive, structured and serious — and still joyful.
The formula is deceptively simple. Thirty pounds entry. A guaranteed minimum of three matches. Best-of-three scoring for pace and turnover. Full integration with Squash Levels, so every result feeds directly into a live ranking ecosystem that players obsessively track. And, crucially, a branded T-shirt at the end of it all — proof you were there, part of something.
Yet the appeal runs deeper than merchandise or metrics. MatchPoint has tapped into a gap in the English squash landscape between the solemnity of league squash and the severity of professional events.
Younger knows that gap intimately.
“I grew up as a rugby player — squash was one of those things that just happened by accident,” he says.
“I went along one day when I was about 10, or 11, and I just loved it and fell down the rabbit hole. I went home that night from squash and said to my Dad that I wanted to quit rugby — all I wanted to do was play squash.”
He was not prodigious at first. “I wasn’t very good when I started, but I was just crazy for the game.”
Obsession has its own gravitational pull. By the end of his junior career he was a rising junior in England. He beat players ranked in the national top five. He joined the PSA. And then, as it does for many promising juniors, life intervened.
“Going pro was something that was in my head,” he says. “But if I’m honest with myself, when I was that age, I was going out partying too much. I was never very serious with my training.”
He travelled at 19. An apprenticeship as a quantity surveyor turned into a full-time career. The glass box gave way to spreadsheets and site visits. Squash drifted.
For a decade.
About 18 months ago, at 29, he decided to reverse the equation.
“I’d had enough of that life and wanted to try something a bit different — and in that period of time my squash has progressed a lot. I’m actually probably a better player now at 29 than I was at 19.”
Younger returned to the sport not as a fading prodigy but as something steadier: an adult who knew what he loved. Before MatchPoint, there was the Gosforth Classic — a PSA event he ran “as a bit of a hobby thing” in Newcastle, partly to bring elite players north.
Then came a weekend trip south to one of Joe Magor’s graded amateur events. Squash by day, beers by night.
“I saw how well Joe’s format was working,” Younger says. “You get a quicker turnaround in the matches — 25 minutes instead of 45 — so people finish and then linger around.”
The key word is linger.
“There’s always a time where it’s one all in a match, and you think, oh, I want to watch this deciding game. Whereas it’s much less often than a match will go two-two. So from a spectator point of view and from the occupancy of the club, it creates a real vibe.”
The best-of-three format, often treated as a compromise, here becomes an accelerant. Matches conclude more quickly. Crowds accumulate rather than disperse. Energy compresses. The A Grade final is scheduled last, so that even the D and E graders — those who once felt too modest to enter a tournament at all — have reason to stay.
“The E graders will mark the D graders, the D graders will mark the C graders,” Younger explains. “You’re always watching players that little bit better, and that’s part of the addictive and aspirational side of it.”
Aspiration, in squash, can sometimes feel abstract. At MatchPoint events, it is immediate. The 6,000-plus Squash Levels finalists are not distant figures on a livestream but people ordering chicken goujons at the bar.
“If we can get a couple of those top guys in our events and they’re lingering around the club, having their lunch, and the juniors are going and getting their top signed, their racket signed, whatever — it creates that intimacy with the top level players.”
That intimacy is not accidental. Younger’s small team — graphic designer Adam Coates and app developer Rajat Kumar — are, in his words, “squash nerds”. The branding is sharp. The technology seamless.
“We’re working with full Squash Levels integration at the minute,” he says. “So rather than having to wait for your levels to update in the app, it’s going to be basically linked with your Squash Levels profile and live update.”
For amateurs, that immediacy matters. Improvement is visible. A good Saturday becomes a measurable climb. The feedback loop tightens.
“We normally have 50 or 60 person occupancy for a four-court club. I think our first event we had 58. Since then I’d say more than 90% fill to 100% capacity.”
Clubs, once sceptical, are now approaching him.
“At the start I was pushing quite a few clubs and I found that the more that I pushed, the more reluctant they were. Now the reputation is spreading and we get a lot of clubs asking us.”
It helps that Saturday, traditionally a quiet day for many clubs, becomes an event.
“For the clubs, if they’ve got a bar, they usually do pretty well on the day,” Younger says. “It’s rare we’ll have an event with players from less than 20 different clubs.”
In an era when club sport often struggles to transcend its own postcode, that cross-pollination feels quietly significant.
The presence of professionals adds another layer. Will Salter, a PSA player who has won both the MatchPoint Bedale and Jesmond Opens, speaks of the experience with passion.
“In both cases the club was absolutely buzzing,” Salter says. “Three best of three matches in a day provides a different kind of physical and mental challenge for me, but one I thoroughly enjoyed.
“I really enjoyed immersing myself in a community of players that love the sport for what it is; social, challenging and fun, as opposed to playing professional events where everyone is more serious.”
He pauses.
“It was nice to play purely out of enjoyment.”
That line might be the most important in this entire story.
English squash has, in recent years, faced existential questions. Court closures. Membership stagnation. An ageing demographic. The sport’s long-awaited Olympic inclusion has brought hope at the elite level, but grassroots vitality does not automatically follow global recognition.
MatchPoint is not a revolution. What it is doing, however, is something perhaps more fundamental: it is reminding amateur players that competition need not be intimidating, that grading can be inclusive rather than hierarchical, that a tournament can feel like a festival rather than an examination.
“We’ve got guys who’ve played in 15 odd events,” Younger says. “That’s the epitome of what we’re about — people who absolutely love squash.”
In the D and E grades, where players once hesitated to enter events for fear of humiliation, the shift is tangible.
“We have people who often don’t feel like they’re good enough to enter a tournament. Across all the grades it’s about providing a proper tournament environment where everyone can get some close games, see themselves progressing, see their name in a draw and just have a good time all round.”
On a Saturday afternoon in a provincial English club, when the A Grade final reaches its deciding game and the crowd leans forward as one, the sound returns. The murmur. The buzz. The sense that this, in its modest way, matters.
Squash has always been a game of margins. Of inches from the tin. Of holds and feints and fractional advantages. Match Point understands that its own success will be incremental too. One club at a time. One Saturday at a time.
