The Pennant Triples

After such a lovely few days of hot weather we all gathered at Ickleford under grey skies and the obvious threat of rain for the PMPL Triples.

All sixteen teams that had entered turned up together with one that was unexpected causing a quick re-think on the running order, nevertheless play commenced at 10.05am.

The four round snake progressed steadily throughout the morning and in to the early afternoon and as there were an odd number of teams there was always someone to talk to while they sat out their Bye round and because of that there was a need to have a catch-up round at the end to enable all teams to play their required 4 games.

There were a few shocks during the snake – LCC (Dave Washbourne, Gavin McClaren and Steve Dixon) losing all 4 games, 3 Musketeers (Martin Hughes, Derek Northend and James Cullip), Hunted by Hounds (a clever play on words from a combination of Nev and Jo from White Hart and Rob Fox) and Locos (Steve Zimmerman, Ian Perton, Sharon Fane and Jo Crosier) each only winning 1 game.

The real surprise was JSP (John Luke, Paul and Sean Daisley yes that’s right young Sean one of the up and coming juniors) being one of only 2 teams to win all 4 matches, the other being Bucks Head (Steve Noel, Rob Munday and Sam Blakey).

LCC had a tight game with Panthers (Irene and Simon Harding and Becky who were so keen to play that they joined the EPA on the day to allow them to do so) in the preliminary of the plate, eventually winning their first game of the day.

The plate final was contested by Locos and 3 Musketeers, thus proving that you can have a bad morning and still contest a final under the system used for these competitions; the eventual winners by a considerable margin was Locos.

The Main final was between Q.R.F.T.Z.S.R.Q (Gareth Sullivan, Miles Gooda and Tom Hutchins) and Relentless (Danny Sims, Jack Blows and Alan Griffiths who kindly stepped in at the eleventh hour due to an injury sustained by Phil Winston on Saturday).

By managing to get 5 points in the last end Q.R.F.T.Z.S.R.Q overhauled Relentless to win the competition.

I said at the start of this report that we arrived under grey skies and I think I should elaborate a little on the weather. We had a cool breeze all morning and some warm sunshine early afternoon, what none of us expected was the down pour we had late afternoon that washed away the car park pistes and threatened to cause a postponement of the later games due to flooding of the main pistes.

There were some very wet competitors by the time we finished at 8.30pm (Martin Hughes has the photos to prove it) and I would like to thank all of those players and supporters that stayed until the end to ensure that the competition reached it’s conclusion.

My thanks to Iain Lewis for setting up the car park pistes for us.

Finally, the next date for your diary is the PMPL Doubles on Saturday 17^th July, more details to follow

Alan Brockett
Goring Berry LLP
53, London Road, St. Albans, AL1 1LJ
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