Sunday, November 13th 2016
The 8th Cobbetts Poppy Appeal Doubles was held on November 13th. Incredibly our limit of 38 teams was reached a month before the competition! It was agreed that we could use some of the car park for 5 extra terrains allowing us to take up to 48 teams. This new limit was reached and in fact one more team was turned away the day before the competition. Teams came from far and wide, notably two from Cardiff, two from London, two from Whitnash in Warwickshire and one from Chiltern region.
As usual play was stopped at 11am for the traditional two minutes silence for Remembrance Sunday. This year we had the added bonus of having Pat Parsons from the Royal British Legion to say a few words before the start of play and to read the exhortation before the silence.
There were 12 morning leagues of 4 teams with the top 16 qualifying for the main competition in the afternoon, the next 16 in the plate and the final 16 in the wooden spoon. Unusually, after the morning leagues two teams were tied for 16th place and so a play-off to 5 points was needed. Richard Foulsham and Trish Richens were successful and went into the main competition while Tim and Daena Vincent unluckily found themselves in the Plate.
Dave Stubbs and Richard Greeves saw off the strong London pair of Barry Wing and Dave Freeman in the first round. They then found themselves 0-10 down to Sean Prendergast and Sam Blakey. Having fought back magnificently to take an 11-10 lead they then wasted a golden opportunity to win the game and eventually lost 13-12. Steve Daykin, playing with regional junior Jamie Brooks, beat the strong team of Harrison Ash and Mike Tull but then lost to another regional junior, Marc Franco -Llado, playing with his father David Franco-Cruz. Marc and David then followed this with an excellent win against Sam and Sean.
In the other half of the draw, Dave Plumhoff and Oscar Panadero-Gimeno beat the other London team of Vince Wills and Fadi Brahma, followed by the Worthing pair Chris Hunt and Bob Ainsworth who made the quarter-finals for the second year running. They then beat Steve and Karen Lombard in the semi-final.
In the final, David (with son Marc) successfully defended the title against Dave and Oscar to win it for the third successive year, having won it last year with fellow Spaniard Dani Soriano, and in 2014 with Dave Plumhoff.
Thanks to the great support shown by club members and all the visiting players, the event looks extremely likely to easily surpass last year’s donation of £500.