Northern Championships results

Sat Jan 15 (Singles and Fours) and Sun Jan 16 (Pairs and Triples)

Since 2001, the annual NESMBA Championships had been held at Barnard Castle (BC), but the decision was taken during the year to move them to York. This was prompted by an offer from the Short Mat Players Tour (SMPT) to leave 16 of their 32 mats at the York & District IBC after their own “British Open” competition staged there over the previous weekend had been completed. This was seen as a good move with several advantages not least of which was to remove the logistical nightmare of getting 16 mats up to BC from several different sources.

Each day kicked off at 9.30 and the usual format was followed with each discipline having 32 entrants. In the initial round robin stages half of these are eliminated before the remaining 16 contest the the knockout stages. Our squad of 52 was composed of 5 Singles, 4 Pairs, 5 Triples and 6 Fours.

Three of our Singles, got through the RR but neither Dave Hunton or Danny Langdon progressed further. David Newsome was our best performer reaching the Semi-Finals.

It was the same story in the Pairs with both Tim Jackson/Dennis Jarvis and Arthur Jackson/Sue Pittham unable to get past their first KO matches but with Ben Render/Danny Langdon reaching the Semi-Finals.

In the Triples, although all 5 of our entries reached the last 16, 4 were then eliminated and only Simon Holtby, Allan Meek and Rose Haynes went a stage further to reach the Quarter-Finals.

The Fours are the discipline in which historically we have always done best and so it was this year. Stephen Packer’s team (Jane Rudd, Steve Duffin and David Newsome) and Roger Green’s team (Debbie Taylor, Paul Johnson and John Walker) both reached the Quarter-Finals whilst our best performance of the weekend was by Joseph Newsome’s rink (Dave Hunton, Andrew Mather and David Brown) who went all the way to the Final.

Overall, our team did not perform well enough across the board to challenge for the County Shield which was won by West Yorkshire (runner up Stockport).

Our FOURS finalists