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.
Great result for the U25 team and a good effort from the seniors.
ReplyDeleteShouldn't the EBU have a history of bridge in the UK and be able to verify teams, results etc.?
I think the last time we won was 1989, when the team was Great Britain. It will have featured some of the players that are still strong in bridge in this country today - Stuart and Gerald Treddinick, Neil Rosen, Derek Patterson are likely contenders.
ReplyDeleteI can report that despite some players being delayed until Monday evening, the teams have all returned home safely.
Michael Byrne
Well done, Tom. Nice report.
ReplyDeleteDo we not have a picture of the triumphant U25 team?
There are photos of the team on Facebook, perhaps the photographer(s) would care to ship them here. Re the previous winners, MGB has one player in common with Richard Fleet's submission, and the dates are different, I'm fairly sure 1989 is wrong. Richard captained the team, and instructed his players to play the last set down the middle. So which of his players do you think opened Three Hearts in this situation with nine solid diamonds?
ReplyDeleteI was the captain in 1988 and it was technically an England team, though selection rights were ceded to the BBL.
ReplyDeleteSo far as I recall, the team was Gaskell-Small, Hobson-Patterson, Pagan-Souter and our winning score was 108.5.
Cameron Small certainly played, displaying an idiosyncratic interpretation of down the middle bridge.
Richard Fleet
I played in the winning team the year after Fleet's victory, so presumably 1989. I think the team was Hobson-King, Bowles-Small and Davies-Dunsby, with John Pottage as NPC. The players mentioned by Michael Byrne were all too old by then.
ReplyDelete