Thirty five years ago, Mike Riley of Wigginton Squash Club donated a magnificent trophy to the Men’s York and District League as a team handicap trophy & this was soon to be followed by the Ladies Riley Rosebowl.

Needless to say Wigginton men have always failed at the final hurdle and failed to win the trophy in three final appearances. Until now! In fact four clubs that no longer exist have won the Riley Cup..Magnets, South Milford, Oval Ball & St John’s Students before Wigginton SRC!

The final of the Riley Cup was due to be played at 3pm on a Sunday afternoon at York, but Stillington, who’s courts were being refurbished, graciously and very sportingly agreed to play at Wigginton on the Sunday evening to make more of a night of the finals. Wigginton put on food for the main & plate finals and a good night was had by all.

Stillington 5th team beat Malton 4th team in the plate final by 20 points.

Stillington 5 V Malton 4 (Plate Final)
P.Coates V R.Harper 15/12, 15/14, 15/9 45 V 34
D.Cook V K. Goddard 15/10, 15/12, 15/9 45 v 31
J.Hartley V M.Hammond 14/15, 14/15, 8/15 36 V 45
F.Howell V T.Moore 15/8, 15/10, 15/11 45 v 29
J.Gill V A.Drabble 15/9, 15/10, 15/8 45 v 27

Stillington 216 points Malton 166 plus 30 handicap = 196

The final was a tense affair, a new 4th team player, Steve Drake for Wigginton, playing as a reserve in his first competitive match got 2, 4 & 9 points against Giles Bilton. Wigginton were on the back foot but then Mackenzie Nichol playing Dominic Pegg conceded 7, 8 & 9 points.

Probably all even stevens at this point in the match but with Tom Howell, Marc Thomas & Anthony Baines at 2,3 & 4 , all of whom have played no 1 for Stillington over the last few seasons it looked a rather gloomy prospect for Wiggy! Was it a slow start by Stillington players or really pumped up Wiggy players…the picture is painted by the side of fence you were on! But Mark Wilson , Nick Clifford & Chris Codrai all won the first of their three games…..in the following games although the legs were weary they all managed to put in very respectable performances.

In the Club that night was Mike Riley himself, although he still lives in the village he rarely gets into the Club. He kindly stayed for the presentation as Ian Ball announced that with a 45 point handicap on their score of 161 , Wigginton had beaten Stillington by 12 points!

Mike was obviously, over the moon to present the Trophy to Wigginton after all these years & he himself admitted that even though he set the handicaps for 10 years…his team could never win it !

Wigginton 3 V Stillington 1 (Main Final)
M.Nicholl v D.Pegg 15/7, 15/8, 15/9
M.Wilson V T.Howell 15/12, 4/15, 11/15
N.Clifford V M.Thomas 15/11, 13/15, 11/15
C.Codrai V A.Baines 15/12, 6/15, 8/15
S.Drake V G.Bilton 4/15, 5/15, 9/15

Thanks must go to Ian Ball who organised the tournament this year & together with Rod Erridge and Marc Thomas, assessed the teams and decided on the handicaps.

Have a good squash season in 2016/17.

Nick Clifford

The draw for the Riley Cup is now available here. The first round should be played by the end of May. Home captains, please contact your away counterparts to arrange.

Any questions, please contact Ian Ball at ian.ball@tatasteel.com.

Congratulations to Ed Shannon, who beat Mathhew Stephenson in an all-Dunnington 2016 York Open final at Clifton Park. Shannon had beaten Jonny Duffield in a hard fought semi, before overcoming Stephenson 3-1 in the final.

In the plate, Joe Twigge beat Gus Clapham 3-2.

In the new ‘B’ competition, York’s Tom Sewell beat Stillington’s Martin Pepper 3-0 in the final.

The full results are here.

The 2016 Men’s York Open Squash Championship will be held at York Squash Club, Clifton Park from Monday 22nd February – Friday 26th February (no games on Wednesday 24th).

There is both a Men’s A (open to all) and Men’s B (open to those ranked in Div 3 Y&D or below).

The entry fee is £6 and the losing date is Tuesday 16th February.

Enter only online at www.sportyhq.com/tournament/view/York-Open

The York & District Men’s Veterans & Vintage Championships were played at Wigginton Squash Rackets Club last week. There was a week of well contested matches played in an excellent spirit, which had entrants from most Y & D club’s. A special point of note & thanks should go to Thornton Le Dale who had 3 entrants in the Vintage, two of whom came from Whitby & Scarborough. Well done lads!

Bearing that in mind , rather disappointingly only 6 players entered the Veterans O40 competition but a healthy 12 the Vintage O50, which was run for the first time in a number of years. Let’s hope we get a better supported Veterans next year!

But to more positive notes… The Men’s Veteran final was between two Wigginton players and a re-run of Wiggintons last Club Championships. The result was the same with Simon Middleton beating Ian Tooms 3-0 to win the Veterans Championship.

The standard of squash on the finals night was excellent and in the Vintage final Neil Chambers of York Squash Club beat Steve Toas of Dunnington 3-0. The Vintage plate was won bt Jon Wright of Stillington beating Rob Cooper of Wigginton.

O40 winner Simon Middleton

O40 runner up Ian Tooms

O50 winner Neil Chambers

O50 runner up Steve Toas

Hi all

The York Vets (O40) and Vintage (O50) champs are to be held at Wigginton from Mon 23 Nov and Fri 27 November this year.

Please see the poster.

Entries direct to Nick Clifford please.

Thank you all for playing this summer, I do hope you’ve all enjoyed keeping those muscles moving in preparation for the new season. Its been a challenging season, some fixtures not been fulfilled and there have been some injuries along the way. In the whole I know I’ve enjoyed it and I hope you have too. I do find this a lot harder than the winter leagues, matching players generally works, then again sometime no matter how hard you try it fails! Thank you all for your efforts.

With all that said its great we keep the the game so alive and active in the closed season. The Final was held on the 12th September at York Sports Club aka Clifton Park. A good spirited game between Dunnington (Matt) and RI-Rookies in the absence of Captain Rod (I hope you got a trophy Rod?).

The game ended 4-2 to Dunnington, and congratulation to Matt and team as winners this year. A sterling effort from RI Rookies and great accolade to both teams in winning their respective leagues. I did have the match scores somewhere, but lost them with all the excitement.

That’s all for this year, see you all over the winter season at some point.

Best regards

Andy Sewell

2015 Summer League Winners: Dunnington

AGM 2015

The minutes from the York & District Squash League AGM 2015 held May 20th are now available.

Pocklington 1 beat RI 2 to win the Riley Cup at York Squash Club last Friday. The individual results were as below:

No 5 – Saw a strong start from RI’s Paul Benson who was a 3rd team reserve against Pock’s Mark Smales going into an 11-3 lead, only to be beaten 15-14. 2The nd game saw a reversal of this with Mark going into a 8-1 lead, finally winning 15-10. Everything was going quite evenly up to 6-6 in game 3, until Mark closed it out 15-9.
No 4 – This was probably the most evenly matched game with RI’s Luke Madge up against Pock’s Adam Hemmingway. Both players had similar styles, retrieving and moving well, and thee was little to split the pair.  

No 3 – RI’s reserve Brian McRobbie played his experienced tactical game against Pock’s Darren Eccles limiting him to 5, 6 and 11 points in the 3rd game as Darren tired.

No.2 – Saw RI’s Adam Benson up against Jerome Remblance. Adam played a very canny game knowing consolidation was required limiting the frustrated Jerome to 2, 6 and 8 points.

No.1 – Pock’s experienced Alastair Dick also knew what was required here against Dan Adams at 1 in the absence of John Henderson. Dan clawed back from 11-14 down to win the 1st 15-14. With Alastair not making the same mistake twice closing the 2nd out 15-10. Dan rallied in the 3rd as he knew he needed to winning 15-5 against a tiring Alastair. 

Handicapping this game was difficult with Pocklington at full strength and RI missing 3 team regulars, but Pocklington did win 5 games out of the 15. In the end the handicap was set at 65 giving Pocklington a winning margin of 15 points i.e. 1 point a game.

Thanks to the players, York for hosting and Brian Godson for ably handicapping the tournament throughout.  

All

The York and District Squash AGM will be held on Wednesday 20th May at 8:00pm at York Railway Institute.

It’s important that a representative from each club attend. In addition to presenting the trophies, we will discuss the organisation of the divisions for next year and propose rule changes (both to be shared in advance).

Marc