Hello everyone, I am going to try to replace David Muller as Internationals blogger. Please feel free to chip in with your questions and comments.
Last weekend's international action featured seniors and juniors.
Stage I of the Seniors trial was at the Young Chelsea. The day before play, team captain Denis O'Donovan was a player short and threatening to scratch. A phone call to Malcolm Lewis proved productive, he was recruited to join Denis and his team-mates, Patrick Collins and John Short. Even with four players at the table, this team wouldn't have been favourites to qualify at the expense of Tony Waterlow's all-international quartet, and other respected opponents, but they managed it. O'Donovan lost the head-to-head match 14-16, but outscored Waterlow 54 to 53 VPs over the weekend round-robin, ahead of Jepson and Palmer who scored 36 and 35 VPs respectively.
This entitles Denis and his men to play Ross Harper's exempted gold medallists over 96 boards, winners to represent England in the Senior Camrose and the Senior European in Ostend.
Ostend also hosted the Junior Channel series, in which the EBU fielded three teams. Our girls finished third behind the Dutch, and our Schools team trailed in fourth behind the French. But our U-25s team carried the flag, winning for the first time for ages, but I think slightly less than the 25 years of hurt as reported on the front page. Perhaps someone can recall the exact year and winning team?
Many congratulations to our 2009 Junior Channel champions, hope they've all made it home by now:
Tom Paske, Ed Jones, Ben Paske, Graeme Robertson, James Paul, Alice Kaye, and n.p.c. Simon Cope.
