The Irish team suffered a agonising fate in the Crockfords Cup over the weekend. The Crockfords is England’s premier teams competition, their national open team-of-four championship. It consists of knock-out matches in the early stages, played privately, qualifying eight teams to contest an all-play-all final. This year’s version has been going on since January.
In the seven-round all-play-all final, the Irish team (Tommy Garvey, Tom Hanlon, John Carroll, Mark Moran, Adam Mesbur, and Nick FitzGibbon) finished joint first on 71 Victory Points, only to lose out on a split tie to Team Leslie (Ben Norton, Kieran Dyke, Michael Byrne, and Mike Bell) by virtue of having lost the relevant head-to-head match. Scant reward after so much effort over nine months, but a worthy performance nevertheless in a very strong field.
The next major outing for several of the team will be representing Ireland at the European Champion’s Cup in Helsinki in early November, so here’s hoping they can keep up the strong form.