Sunday, November 9th 2014
A cloudless sky for the start of the 6th Cobbetts Poppy Appeal Doubles held on November 9th and a full-house of 32 teams. Before play started a few moments were taken to remember Mike Knight (Arundel) and David Osborne (Bordon) who both passed away recently. At 11am play stopped for the traditional two minutes silence for Remembrance Sunday.
After the morning leagues, unusually all 8 league winners had won 3 games and all 8 2nd placed teams had won 2. Leading the way were the Cobbetts/Southampton City combination of Steve Daykin and Alex Hepburn with an impressive +29. They were closely followed by another combination from the same clubs, David Cruz and Dave Plumhoff, on +25.
After the usual excellent lunchtime food from Lyn 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. Unfortunately, the weather had taken a turn for the worse over the lunch break and the afternoon saw a number of heavy downpours.
The defending champions Dave Stubbs and Richard Greeves could only manage one win in a tough morning league and just missed out on the main competition finishing 17th. However, they did go on to win the Plate competition beating Peter Kidd and Justin Ellis from Handcross in the final.
In the last 16, Steve and Alex were surprisingly beaten by mother and son pairing Karen and Mark, who themselves were beaten in the next round by Chris and 12 year old Marc from the home club. An all Cobbetts semi-final saw Ali and Mike defeat Chris and Marc to improve on their semi-final finish of last year. Meanwhile Marc’s dad David continued through to the final, beating Steve and Karen in the other semi-final. David and Dave proved too strong in the final and ran out 13-4 winners.
Lyn also made a fruit cake decorated with a beautiful handmade poppy for a guess the weight competition and Mary Sheppard (Fareham) was within half an ounce of the correct weight to win the cake. Although the final sums have still to be done, thanks to the great support shown by club members and all the visiting players, it looks certain that the event will have surpassed last year’s donation of £386 and will have raised around £400 for the Poppy Appeal.