Well - mission accomplished! We came in knowing that the top eight teams would qualify for next year’s Bermuda Bowl and our fine late form took us through.

We started with the eventual gold medalists - Norway. A match full of exciting boards saw a few big swings traded. Possibly the most interesting swing happened when Forrester judged to bid a thin 3NT  holding AQTx of hearts because of a slightly dubious 2H overcall, this brought in a double digit swing.

The next match was quite fantastic. Allerton/Jagger and Bakhshi/Malinowski powered away scoring an avalanche of imps against a strong Bulgarian team, simultaneously relaxing the team supporters since we were now virtually assured of qualification with a match to spare. We even were able to concede a 1700 penalty (!!!!) and still win by 31 imps.

We were able to enjoy the final match against France despite the fact that the result didn’t fall in our favour, we lost by 18 but secured a 7th place finish.

Reflecting on the tournament as a whole I really felt that our team finished tremendously well and our second week’s form for the whole event would have had us in contention for the gold medal. Our very good results against the other strong teams bodes really well for next year’s Bermuda Bowl.

On a personal note I would like to say how proud I am of all my players and would like to make a special mention to our indefatigable coach Andrew Murphy. I sincerely look forward to seeing them together with our women’s and senior’s teams who did really well to qualify next year in China!

Neil