Dave, in possession of his trophy; handed over by Mark

Having been delayed a week due to Mark being on holiday (well, he is the grand master of these monthly competitions), twelve keen fencers got together on Tuesday 1^st October, despite being one of the wettest few weeks for years, to compete for the coveted Monthly Club Competition Trophy.  After a very quick deliberation, via WhatsApp, it was decided to initiate ‘Paul’s Rules’ for this month’s duel.  The rules being as follows:

1. Everybody fences everybody else – no standard poule fights.
2. Each duel to last 1 minute – no exceptions
3. The first to land a hit, scores the win and the fight ends
4. In the event of a double hit, the duel is declared void with no winner allocated
5. In the event that the minute passes without a hit being landed, the duel is declared void with no winner allocated
6. At the end of all completed fights, the fencer with the most wins tallied – wins!
7. In the event that a tie is declared between the most wins, then the round will start again with those who scored the most wins previously, following the rules again, until a winner is determined!

Yes, easy I hear you cry!  With the scorer having pieced together a, very professional, scoresheet, on the cuff, we were ready for the off.  The event was contested over two pistes as everyone was eager to see how the competition was competing.  Despite a terrible foot injury that has kept him from competing at his peak for a while now, Rob stepped up to the plate against Helen.  Full of confidence, he was quickly knocked down when Helen landed a hit, that even she declared “I don’t know how”!  Picking up his game, and his insistence that he was a 15-point prodigy, not a one hit wonder, he managed to pull back five more wins, but seemed to be scuppered by two matches (Mark and Rohan) whereby they either had double hits or ran out of time, therefore not registering either a win or a loss.  Rohan and Mark were equally unlucky, on the night, with both having three matches each, that didn’t register a win or a loss.  However, with four such finishes, it was obviously not Peter’s night, as apart from that those, he only registered two losses across all his matches. Mark, having been delayed returning from holiday by 48 hours, and having only landed in the very early hours, was clearly running on steam by the middle of the evening.  With three non-registered matches and only two wins, he can only hope to be on better form next month!

The final match of the evening was Steve versus Paul and, this became the deciding match, as to whether Dave was going to win outright or share the coveted trophy.  However, with seven wins to his name, Paul could not get the single hit against Steve, that was required to put him in the joint top spot.  However, Steve’s win over Paul, did mean that it promoted him to the joint second place, alongside his opponent. 

It was a very fun evening with a number of twists and turns as the evening went on, but then that is the joy of the ‘one-hit’ type of competition.  Well done, Dave, who is a very deserved winner.  We look forward to seeing you all soon.