The EBU team at the 2015 Lady Milne

The EBU team was made up of the pairs who came second, third and fourth in the trials in January. Of the six players, only Anne Rosen had any full international experience. As far as I could tell, no other team had more than one debutante, and many of the opposition players had more than five previous Lady Milne appearances, not to mention European Championships and so on. Given that daunting environment, the EBU team performed very creditably, winning three of the five matches, including beating England in the first match – that alone was worth the trip!  At one point in the last stanza against Ireland it looked as though we (alright, they) could snatch second place, but the Irish rallied over the last few boards.

The Welsh last won the event in 1988. {‘What’s 1988?’ asked one of the EBU team, who hadn’t been born then.}  The Welsh celebrated in style with some fine singing (no surprise there).  I wonder what Team EBU would have sung if we had won.  Does the EBU have an anthem?  If not, why not?

The event was very well organised by Darren Evetts and Dawn Mertens, and very well directed by Mike and Sarah Amos.

Moving from the real to the slightly surreal …

We live in the age of Super Heroes, where seemingly ordinary people have extra-ordinary powers and rather un-ordinary names.  Such is their dedication to the cause that the Super Heroines of the EBU team played under assumed names, each of which has the letters E B U at its heart.

Let me introduce them to you:

       ~ Olympic Champion Anne Rosen was Rosebud

       ~ Hannah Cornfield, playing in her first international, was Debutante

       ~ Marietta Andree’s nom-de-jeu was Nebula

       ~ Janet Cahm played under the name Trebuchet

       ~ Sarah O’Connor’s alter-ego was Doodlebug

       ~ Kath Stynes played as Cheeseburger, our very own quarter-pounder.

By day I am a mild-mannered reporter for a great national magazine; by night I am Captain Ebullient. My thanks, and the team’s, to our unofficial coach, Mike Bell, who made the trip as Beelzebub.

The players were too busy reading my training paper, A dozen things to do with Gerber, to pose for a team photo before the event, but I managed to round up some stunt doubles at the Hurlingham Bridge Club. The photo is available here