Sunday the 12th January saw the next round of our National Qualifiers / County Competitions at Stevenage. This time it was the main fours competition with eight teams lined up to play in two groups of four. At 8.55 we got the message that due to a problem with their car on route two players were suddenly unavailable. Our competition organiser Darren Stanford was well prepared for this eventuality, plan two (was there a plan three?) was put into operation and the competition was redrawn as a round robin with all seven remaining teams playing each other. With an odd number of teams this meant that there would be seven rounds to play and it would be a long day with short breaks. With the new paperwork all in place the day ran extremely smoothly. Unfortunately for Darren Stanford it meant that he was unable to play as the missing players were part of his team. Fortunately for the competition it meant that we had a non-playing umpire which was just as well as Darren’s services were called upon many times. As the last round of the competition came to an end it was all hands on deck to help put away our mats while Darren and Rebecca sat and calculated the final positions of our seven teams.
Working backwards, the three teams at the end of the table were:-
Doreen, Mike, Sue and Barry; Lisa, Andrew, Margaret and Alan; Gordon, Tony, Gill and Neil.
Winning three of their games with six points for fourth place were Bill, Toni, Julia and Neil.
Winning three games and drawing a fourth for third place were Alan, Bev, Martin and Brian.
We then had the top two teams both winning five games.
With a shot difference of 18 and taking second place were the team of Audrey Fowler, Brian Fowler, Mark Spalding and Darren Brown.
Our winners with a shot difference of 24 were the team of Jeanette Gayler, Jan Rogers, Jeff Branch and Malcolm Warwick.
Congratulations to our four winners. Special Mention must go to Jeanette Gayler, this win takes her number of county titles held to twenty six. She is now within two titles of our top scoring Hertfordshire player Tony Gayler. Next week sees us all at Stevenage again for our last county competition of this season the prestigious Singles. Can Jeanette take another win and progress up the table of most wins? Nineteen other prospective winners will be at Stevenage battling it out to take the top spot. If you are not playing then you could come along to spectate, if you want to be involved then why not contact Darren Stanford and volunteer to be a marker for a couple of the games. It gives you the best viewing spot in these exciting singles matches.