DEFENDING Yorkshire Squash Premier League champions Dunnington recovered from last week's defeat with a win over Woodfield.

Newly-promoted Woodfield lie in fourth, level on points with Pontefract 2, though this was the Doncaster club's third defeat of the season, going down 3-2 (16-7) to Dunnington, who lost 16-9 to leaders Abbeydale the previous Wednesday.

Kieron Heaphy and stalwart Matthew Stephenson got the visitors from York off to the perfect start only for Tesni Evans - the world number nine, making her Yorkshire League debut - and Luke McFarland to get Woodfield back on level terms.

That left Ben Sockett, England's sixth-ranked junior, and the experienced Julian Tomlinson to battle it out for the glory of winning the match. It was the visitors' Tomlinson who triumphed in three straight games.

Table-toppers Abbeydale won an epic battle with Barnsley to take a five-point lead over their South Yorkshire rivals at the summit.

In a tussle which went right to the wire, 16-year-old Jack Walmsley and Phil Scully claimed early 3-0 scalps for either side at the bottom of the order, before world number 23 Millie Tomlinson toppled Abbeydale's Oli Turner in a five-game marathon.

However, Adam Turner's 3-0 trouncing of Stuart MacGregor meant the result would be all down to the top-string match.

It pitted the home side's Adam Auckland, the 26-year-old from Grimsby, against Barnsley's Jamaican international Lewis Walters, and it was Abbeydale's Auckland who took it 11-8 in the fifth and final game, to the home crowd's delight.