This year’s Turnbull Trophy saw a large entry, with a wide range of standards. We had close to 20 pairs from over ten different school and Old Boys clubs including St Olave’s/Old Olavians, Berkhamsted School/Old Berkhamstedians, Lancing College/Lancing Old Boys, Westway, St Bartholomew’s School/Coach, Emanuel School/Old Emanuels, Charterhouse school/Old Carthusians, RGS High Wycombe and Stowe School/Old Stoics.
This year we decided to make this a one day event which proved to be a real success. We had 19 pairs with three pools of four and one pool of three, who battled it out to gain a qualifying position, with the top pairs proceeding to the next stage. The pairs that did not qualify for the knock out stages went in to the plate event.
All matches in the main event were well contested but the final itself went to the wire. The Final saw St Olave’s Martin Bassot and Old Olavian Seb Cooley take on the defending champions from Berkhamsted, Andrew Joyce and Master in Charge Doug Foster. The match went to the final game with the Olavian pair eventually overpowering the Berkhamstedians on both top and bottom step to be this season’s Turnbull champions.
This was a great and well attended event and we hope that even more schools will take part next year, with the hope that eventually we will have at least one pair entering from each Fives playing school in the country.
D.E.A.R.
Graham Turnbull Trophy: Report by Dom Redmond
Finalised 14th December 2009 by Mike Fenn
efa@etonfives.co.uk