Our first competition of the year was not the staid, dreary affair we expect post-Christmas festivities and the January blues. 

Mark had excelled himself with this month’s competition rules, so much so, that a couple of sessions prior to the comp, the guys…and gals…used the time for practice!

We were to have a poule unique, where each fencer fought every other fencer.  Each fight was complete when the first fencer reached three hits.  Double hits were to be included.  However; and here is where the fun begins, the fencer to strike first got priority.   This meant that if you got hit, you had to remain with one foot on the line, unable to move that foot.  Essentially you lost priority.  This did not mean that the fencer with priority could just stand back, because, with no time limit, but a score of three to win the bout, the fencer with the priority still had to attempt to win the bout.  This, though proved a learning curve for the fencer without priority, as it meant that they really had to concentrate on blade work and positioning to win the point, get themselves out of trouble and put their opponent into a situation where they had to remain on the line and lose priority. 

With fourteen fencers in attendance, it was a busy night and had then had to roll over to both the Friday and following Tuesday sessions.  With time passing by and so many fencers, it was decided that, on the Tuesday, any fencers not in attendance would have a 5-0 walkover score against them, for those in attendance that they hadn’t fought (red font on the scoresheet).  For any battles, on that Tuesday, where neither fencer was in attendance it was just marked down as a 0-0 draw (yellow highlighted box on the score sheet).

Ellora, Angel, Steve, Mark and Tadek managed the most individual fights overall, without any 0-0 draws and minimal walkover scores.  There were a number of joint wins overall scores and the positions were then allocated on a countback system of who had beaten who with the joint wins.  Overall, Tadek was crowned the winner winning all his fights and only having one walkover win, which in itself is mightily impressive.  Josh was his next nearest competitor with only three losses and one win by way of a walkover.  Mark was just behind with nine wins, two by way of a walkover and four losses and, Peter and Dave tied next with eight wins each, with Peter taking the honours over Dave by way of countback.

Overall, this was quite a challenging competition and the fencers, I’m sure, will look forward to the normal rules (poules and DE) in February!

Well done Tadek and best wishes for the coming year – let’s see if you can beat Henry’s run!