Thursday 7 June 2012

Dublin 2012 - Seniors, Part 1


The European Championships are taking place in Dublin between June 12 and June 23.  England are fielding strong teams with genuine chances of a medal in the Open, Ladies and Seniors events  but, of the three, the best chance of all may lie with our trusty Seniors.

The European Senior series will be played as a single complete round robin provided that the number of participating countries is sufficient. It is anticipated that matches will be of 16 or 20 boards, depending on the number of matches to be played.  Our ever-youthful line-up, sponsored by Pharon Independent Financial Advisers, is as follows:

Paul Hackett & Tony Waterlow
Gunnar Hallberg & John Holland
David Price & Colin Simpson

NPC: Simon Cochemé

England has never won the Seniors event since it began in 1995.  Like the England footballer team, our Seniors have had more success at a ‘worldly’ level. Five of them (all apart from Waterlow who has replaced Ross Harper) won the 2009 D’Orsi Bowl (Bermuda Bowl for Seniors) in Sao Paulo, having finished 7th  in Europe and being called up to Brazil as reserves.  Three of them (the other three H’s) then went on the win the World Championships the next year.

As in the other two events, the top three teams in the Seniors get medals, while the top six get to play in the World championships in Bali in 2013. I’m not sure their bus passes will stretch that far ….


No comments:

Post a Comment