The Cardiff Harlequins PC hosted their first National Championship on Sunday, 8th June, in perfect playing conditions, AKA no rain! The Executive would like to thank the club for their hard work in preparing the NC Doubles: Mixed venue.

The most unfortunate element of the competition was only 17 entries, which meant there would be a bye for some teams during the qualification stage. A four-round Swiss Ladder format was used to rank the teams from 1 to 17. The top 8 teams went forward to the Main Competition, while the next 8 teams went to the Plate Competition. The 17th team exited the competition.

The final ranking of the teams is detailed below:

Qualifying in the top 8 were two new teams with names of players that are not normally seen, so congratulations to Amanda Jenkins and Claude Le Razavet (Monkstone PC) for their outstanding achievement of winning all their four games and Wendy and David Jones (Cardiff Harlequins PC) sneaking into 8th position.

Main Competition

The draw and the final results of the Knock-out for the National title are shown below. All the games were fiercely fought, many of which could have resulted in a different ending. However, the final came down to two old adversaries, Julie Bailey and Len Field, both from SWBRC-PS and the first time paring of Vickie Adshead (Monkstone PC) and Ian Bailey (SWBRC-PS). A very close and tense game developed, which swung back and forth on several occasions, with demonstrations of good pointing and shooting from both sides on a surface that is not commonly encountered.

However, there can only be one winner, and the pairing of Julie and Len took the 2024 Mixed Doubles Champions title.

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Plate Competition

The Plate competition proceeded as it did in the morning qualifier, with the teams finishing in 8th (1) Pat McCarthy and Jean-Yves Robic (SWBRC-PS) and 9th (2) Gail Brooksbank and Peter Stahl (Unaffiliated Members) continuing their journey to the final. A special mention must go to Pat McCarthy, who did not expect to play the number of games she did. Well done, Pat.

The final was again back-and-forth, but ultimately, it swung in favour of Gail and Peter, who took the lead and finished the game with a 13/9 win.