Although numbers were disappointing this year, most of the familiar faces turned up to be greeted by a sunny and windless day.
The entry was only slightly reduced, in part due to late injury withdrawals, but the standard was still high. With four groups of four or five pairs, there was a lot of fives to be played on Saturday but the top two pairs in each group progressed to the quarter-finals with few problems.
The quarter-finals were also played on Saturday. Once again there were no major surprises, although the match between Jake and Anthony Walters and Howard Wiseman and David Mew, a repeat of the Barber Cup match the previous week, again went to five games, with Wiseman and Mew this time emerging victorious.
In the semi-finals on Sunday morning, Matthew Wiseman and James Toop beat Howard and David comfortably, if the game scores (124, 123, 123,) are an accurate reflection of the game. The other semi-final was rather closer with Tom and Peter Dunbar defeating Ed Taylor and Richard Tyler 1210, 1410, 812, 124.
The final too seemed destined to be close, at least for a while, as the Dunbars took the first game 128. However, they were unable to maintain their peak form and Wiseman and Toop rattled off the next three games 121, 126, 127 to win the trophy once more.
As usual, the plate was fairly chaotic, as pairs withdrew at various stages of the day, and unfortunately what records there were of the competition have also disappeared, along with most of my memory of the event. What I can tell you is that Seb & Charlotta Cooley, the first mixed pair to enter the main championship, reached the final defeating Ed Sanderson & Sanjaya Ranasinghe 12-5, 12-9.
It was in the Festival where the shortage of entries was particularly acute. Instead of the usual 30-plus pairs, a combination of half-term at Shrewsbury School and a shortage of cheap accommodation for the Wiseman Army meant that only eleven pairs entered. On the positive side for those who did enter, the event was largely an adult affair as opposed to the usual predominance of schoolchildren. It also meant that, with two pairs qualifying from each group, there would be less chance of one of the stronger pairs losing out due to an unlucky draw. In any event, the semi-finalists were Michael Warner & Tim Yilmaz, who lost to Festival bandits Tony Walters Senior & Chris Yaxley, and Peter Black & Jamie Hepburn, who beat Tom Goodman & Graham Underwood.
In the final, Walters & Yaxley beat Black and Hepburn 125, 124, 124.
Despite having reached the semi-final of the festival competition, Warner & Yilmaz somehow managed to squeeze into the plate as well and unsurprisingly won.
A.D.M.
Northern Championship Report 2002-2003 by Andrew Mitchell
Prepared 2nd April 2003
efa@etonfives.co.uk