Jonny Taylor is pretty well known in squash around Gloucestershire.

The 27-year-old captains Riverside’s number one team in the Gloucestershire Squash League and is also in his second year as captain of Gloucestershire.

He’s been playing the game for some 15 years after starting off as a junior at Riverside Sports & Leisure Club in Gloucester.

He stopped playing when he went to Loughborough University – “I played football and rugby because I wanted to be part of a team,” he explained – but soon picked up the sport again when he had completed his studies.

“I became a duty manager at Riverside so playing squash was quite easy and I soon got back into it,” he said.

And he is happy in his role as captain.

“Riverside run four teams in the winter league,” he said. “There are five in a team but we have squads of six.”

So does Taylor play number one for the flagship team?

“No,” he said with a laugh. “We’ve got a young whippersnapper – 17-year-old Nathan Mead, he’s very handy. It’s the exuberance of youth!”

The top division of the county squash league is a very decent standard but Taylor says it is another step up to play for Gloucestershire, who compete in Division One of the inter-counties competition.

“It is a slightly higher standard,” he said. “You get a number of professionals playing at county level, our number one is ex-professional Jonny Harford and a couple of years ago Nathan Lake was playing for us.”

Lake is a top-50-in-the-world player so that gives you some idea of the calibre of players taking part.

Taylor, who lives in Cheltenham and has recently started a new job as operations manager at Simply Gym, plays for the love of the sport – although he likes to win too!

“It’s a sport that you can spend an hour playing and come off court with a real sweat on,” he said. “It’s a sport where you work hard and hold nothing back.

“It’s also a tactical game, it’s like a game of chess. It’s 1 v 1, there’s no hiding place, you can’t hide behind the rest of a team.

“In terms of competition, it’s very competitive. I enjoy competition, I find it healthy.”

And Taylor certainly enjoyed his recent match against his friend Mark Toseland, the chairman of the Gloucestershire Squash Association, when Riverside played East Glos.

“I’ve known him for five or six years but it’s the first time I’d played him in competition,” he said.

And the result?

“It was a very tough match but I beat him 3-0,” he laughed.