Sunday, November 11th 2012
A lovely sunny day for the 4th Cobbetts Poppy Appeal Doubles held on Remembrance Sunday and a full-house of 32 teams. After the morning leagues, David Cruz and his 10 year old son Marc had won all their games with a points difference of +34. On exactly the same points difference were the home team of Dave Stubbs and Richard Greeves, with 5 other teams also on 3 wins.
After the usual excellent lunchtime food from Lyn, the shoot the egg qualifying rounds and a very well supported raffle, the afternoon knock-out got underway with the top 16 teams qualifying for the ‘Main’ and the remainder playing in the ‘Plate’ competition.
David and Marc continued their winning run in the afternoon defeating Dave Plumhoff and Tony Kidd in the quarter-finals and Harrison Ash and Jenny Tull in the semis to reach the final. Richard and Dave were made to fight long and hard to overcome the excellent Handcross Juniors, Liam and Peter Kidd in the first round but then fell to another Handcross team, Nigel and Jane Sibbring in the quarter-finals. Roz Silvester (Hampshire Rose) and Dave Lucas (Ship) were making a tremendous effort to improve on their runners-up place last year beating Robert and Paula from Cobbetts in the quarters and then Nigel and Jane. As the temperature dropped they remained undefeated on the day fighting back to beat Dave’s club mates from The Ship in a very close final.
Last year’s winners, Mike Tull and Wayne Thatcher failed to make the top 16 and had to be content with being runners-up in the Plate this time around, defeated in the final by Chris Barron and Bernie Miles.
There were 14 qualifiers for the final of Shoot the Egg run by Richard Greeves and it was great to see one of juniors, Liam Kidd, beating off a number of far more experienced shooters to win the prize (although he had to settle for cash and chocolates instead of the bottle of vodka!). It was also good to see so many people sponsoring Richard for Movember and by the end of the day he had collected about £90.
Although the final sums have still to be done, thanks to the great support shown by club members and all the visiting players for the competition, raffle, shoot the egg and Lyn’s catering, it looks certain that the event will have surpassed last year’s donation of £250 and will have raised at least £300 for the Poppy Appeal.