Howard Wiseman reports:
Under new management for the first time in over a decade! Sian Evans kindly offered to take this responsibility from Howard Wiseman's hands - Howard is very grateful!
In at the deep end for both recruitment and running the event on the day, a great deal was quickly learnt by the new competition organiser and a good crowd assembled at Eton - on time! Sadly the date had not turned out to be a good one for many of the regular players. The event was run as two large pools with plenty of Fives for everyone. It was especially pleasing to see several pairs appear from Ipswich school.
As with the old Richard Black tradition (Richard introduced this event and ran it for years), chocolates were handed out to almost anyone who won anything as prizes - ensuring that most players returned home fatter at the end of a day's exercise than when they had arrived at the beginning! Biggest boxes of chocolates went of course to the four main tournament finalists - Anthony Theodossi and Kerry White who narrowly lost to Dominique Redmond and Howard Wiseman in the Final.
As with previous years, this event ran alongside the Veterans. As long as numbers are not too high in either event, this arrangement works particularly well - it is always such a great sight to see all the courts in use at once at Eton.