Mark presenting the trophy to our February victor, Henry.  Well done, Henry.

The February competition got off to a good start with fourteen fencers in attendance and a handful of our newest members also trying their luck.

In a shocking twist of fate, Peter, Robert, Tadek, Sandy, Phil, Paul and Henry were all grouped together in poule one, whereas Rohan, Mark, Ellora, Steve, Torran, Tom and Nate were in poule 2.  The rules for this competition were standard – poules with each duel to five, followed by Direct Elimination (DE), with the earlier DE rounds to five, quarter and semi finals were to ten hits and the final to fifteen hits. 

Robert staked his claim early on, being the only fencer to win all of his poule bouts.  However, Mark and Ellora were hot on his heels with each having four victories.  Tadek and Tom were next up, both winning four of their six matches, with Tom having a cracking match up against Rohan and coming out on top with a 5 v 3 victory. 

With the poules as they were, it led to an interesting seeding for the DE.  Robert was first seed, closely followed by Mark and Ellora.  Henry was middling in sixth seed, but Steve, Rohan, Paul, Phil, Peter and Sandy all found themselves in the bottom half of the seeding standings.

The following Tuesday saw the completion of the event, however, with Robert, Paul and Torran all unavailable, it meant that some of the fencers were gifted byes into the next rounds.  The most fortunate of these was Rohan, who found himself straight into the semi-finals, however, the lack of competition practice on the night seemed to be his downfall, as he was knocked out by a resilient Sandy 10 v 7.  Sandy had had to fight his way through to the final, firstly with a tight bout against Tadek (5 v 4), followed by, what looked like an easier bout against Tom (10 v 3), although the scoreline did not do justice to the effort that Sandy had to put in to overcome the relative newcomer.  Nate beat Ellora, but found himself up against Henry (who had previously beaten Peter in a quick end to Peter’s progression) and, that put paid to Nate’s progression through the competition.  Steve and Phil had their usual close-knit tussle, with the Uncle Albert lookalike winning through, but Mark’s bye from the first round had obviously done him some favours as he had the energy to overcome Steve 10 v 8 and progress to the quarter final against Henry. 

The semi-finals mirrored each other on the score front, with Sandy beating Rohan 10 v 7 and Henry overcoming Mark with the same score.  After a much-needed rest and water break, Henry and Sandy stepped up to the plate to deliver a close fought and enjoyable to watch final.  Unfortunately for Sandy, after the first three-minute round, where the scores were almost even, Henry took the advantage and never looked back, with Mark eventually presenting the trophy to our victor, Henry, with a 15 v 10 score. 

Well done everybody and good luck for the March competition – as it’ll be almost Easter, you never know, we might have the winner presented with the trophy and the usual East hot cross bun prize! 

As for this month, congratulations to Henry – a worthy winner!