I am delighted to report that the EBU has accepted the county's nomination of Ross Stacey for a 2026 Dimmie Fleming Award. 

The intent of the Dimmie Fleming award is to publicly recognise those people who do not hold an official (i.e. EBU) office, but have, for a long time - usually over 15 years – worked hard for bridge in administration at County level.

Ross is the NCBA treasurer and has been since 2009. He is central to the organisation of our annual Swiss Pairs and is a regular in the county team. At his club, Northampton BC, he is secretary, director, scorer, teacher, IT guru and team captain. 

Ross is a modest, quietly spoken man who works with care and efficiency, often behind the scenes, to promote the game. This award is richly deserved.

On Sunday 27th September, Northants faced Suffolk in the Eastern Counties League on RealBridge. All three teams performed superbly winning their matches by large margins. Full results may be seen here. Well done to all our pairs. The B and C teams now sit on top of their leagues and the A team is in 2nd place. The league tables may be seen here.

As usual, county selector Rob Miller, has written up a hand of interest and, as usual, he has modestly chosen one where he could have done better. Rob even suggests he may drop himself from the team but we know him better than that! Read Rob's report here.

On Tuesday 15th September Towcester Bridge Club celebrated its 40th Anniversary.  42 members, past and present were joined by Jonathan Lillycrop from the EBU and Bill Chadwick from NCBA. Everyone had an enjoyable evening with a free drink, a finger buffet and celebration cake.  This was followed by a game of Chicago bridge, won by Trish Ellis and Margaret Brown with an impressive score of plus 2000.  Despite not having its own premises and meeting only once a week, this well run and very welcoming club looks to have a bright future. Here's to the next 40 years.

Below: Chairman Derek Wright cuts the cake.

Many thanks to all 63 pairs who competed in the NCBA simultaneous pairs on Monday 14th September. Your generous contributions will go to the Northants Air Ambulance. Results and Rob Miller's excellent commentary are now available on the ECats website. Click here to view.

Congratulations to Tony Nixon and Ian Blackburn of Wellingborough BC who finished first with the huge score of 68.94%. Close behind were Northampton's Chris Wormleighton and Tim Durdin with 68.53% and in third place were David Wilkinson and Pam Marsh of Oundle BC with 65.35%.

Pictured below, Tony and Ian receive a bottle of wine each from Wellingborough president, Alan Crack.

It is time to enter this year's Broke Cup, the Northants team-of-4 knockout competition and qualifier for the Pachabo.

Matches will be played face-to-face unless both teams agree to play online.

Details are attached: Broke Cup Poster 2026

The Summer Meeting on 6th August saw another superb victory for a Northants pair.

Tim Durdin and Chris Wormleighton won the Open Pairs beating a strong field of 36 pairs. Their huge score of 65.61% saw them finish almost 3% above second place.

The full result may be seen here.

Tim and Chris are pictured below with their trophy.

Sunday 26th July saw Northants take on Cambs and Hunts on RealBridge. 

All 3 teams won against powerful opposition. The A team 12.68 - 7.32, the B team 10.76 - 9.24 and the C team emphatically 16.89 - 3.11.

Full results are  here. ECL league tables are here.

Well done to all who played and thanks to Trevor for directing.

Yet again, I am indebted to Rob Miller for a report on a hand of interest. Rob generously highlights some excellent declarer play by an opponent. You can read it here.

The Scarborough Summer Congress (16th - 19th July) saw Northants players on top form. Dan Baines and Rob Miller beat a high quality field to win the pairs on Thursday and then finished an excellent 4th in the weekend's Swiss Pairs. In between times they combined with Chris Wormleighton and David Smith to first qualify for the A final in Friday's teams and then finish 2nd. Top performances and superb results which can be seen here.

Both Dan and Rob have submitted analyses of interesting hands from the congress. As ever, these contributions are most welcome and well worth a read.

Heres is Rob's and here is Dan's.

Pictured are Dan and Rob showing off their prize for winning the pairs - a cuddly duck eating a hot dog! Did they only get one between them? If so, have they fallen out as to whom should take this home?

*UPDATE* It's a seagull - of course it is!

The new ECL season kicked off on Sunday 21st with Northants taking on Essex. The league now uses a continuous scale for VPs hence all the decimal places.

The A team lost 7.58 - 12.42 but both B and C teams won  13.28-6.72 and 19.22 - 0.78 respectively.

All 4 C team partnerships finished in the top 7 in the X IMP rankings - well played them. All 4 B team partnerships had positive X IMPS as well. 

Full results may be found here.

Yet again NCBA is indebted to Rob Miller for providing an analysis of an interesting hand. This one is from the recent Pachabo Cup. Rob highlights the peculiar scoring system and, as usual, finishes with a helpful tip. You can read his article here.

The Pachabo Cup was held on RealBridge over the weekend of 13/14th June. This is an inter county event for teams of four. Northants are represented by the winners of the Broke Cup who this year were Bill Chadwick, Don McFarlane, Tim Durdin and Trevor Thrower. Rob Miller joined the team as Trevor expected he would need to sit out and, in fact, Rob played 3 of the 4 sessions. There were 27 teams entered and 4 board matches are played against each of the  26 opponents -  a gruelling 104 boards in total. The scoring is an unusual hybrid of IMPs and point a board, each contributing 8 of the 16 points available per match. This makes it difficult to decide on strategy - play safe to land the contract or take a risk for an overtrick and gain the points for winning the board.

Northants spent most of the weekend in the middle of the pack but an excellent final session saw the team finish 8th=. Full results may be seen here.

The EBU's Corwen Trophy is a match pointed pairs competition held over 2 days. This year it was on Sat / Sun 30/31 May at Telford Hotel and Spa. Northants can enter three pairs. Following their success in the Eden Cup this year, we were represented by Tim Durdin / Chris Wormleighton, Graham Froggett / Gerry Kingston and Jane Reeve / Mark Hodgson. When the dust settled after an exhausting 96 boards Jane and Mark were our highest finishers with a highly commendable score of 51.91% securing them 29th place (out of 83) and 3 green points. Our other 2 pairs finished in the bottom half of the field. Well done to all 3 pairs. The full results may be seen here.. 

Jane has written some thoughts on her 'Spa weekend' along with the details of an interesting hand. You can read her account here.

David Ogg and Stuart Sharp represented Northants in the EBU's Nine High Corwen played online on Sat 30th May. Their final score of 53.86% earned them a green point and an excellent 15th place out of 55 pairs who competed. Well done David and Stuart. Full results may be seen here.

The Northants Swiss Pairs event attracted a capacity field of 30 pairs to Northampton BC on Saturday 16th. The winners were Mark Hodgson  and Paul Collins. So far ahead were they, that they could have left early, missed the last round and still won. As Paul commented after collecting the first prize 'it was just a perfect session'. Well done to them and congratulations too to runners up Tony Hill and Alastair Catchpole and Ufuk Cotuk and Chris Wormleighton who finished third.

Full results may be seen here.

Rob Miller has written up a hand of interest and, as ever, his comments are very informative. Read his contribution here.

An IT glitch and subsequent delay meant that only 6 of the planned 7 rounds could be played. NCBA apologise to all for this and hope that their enjoyment of the day was not unduly impaired.

The winning pair (Mark on the left, Paul on the right) are pictured below. Photo courtesy of David Ogg.

Congratulations to the Miller team (Rob, Dan Baines, Ufuk Cotuk, Chris Wormleighton) who won the Betts Bowl by beating Churchill (Brian, Claire Winfrey, Jane Reeve, Elise Aliston, Paul Collins) in a closely fought final.

Winners are pictured L to R: Dan, Ufuk, Rob, Chris

Rob has kindly analysed a hand of interest from the final. You can read his comments here.

The 3 divisions are almost complete.

Congratulations to Bourne A (Chris and Christina Heames, Ian Clarke and  Christine White) who finished top of division one, having been promoted just last year. A first for the Bourne club.

Division 2 has ended in a 3 way tie at the top. Stamford B, Stamford C and Towcester all finished on 69 VPs. The tie is resolved by adding the VPs in the head to head matches between these 3. All this means  many congratulations  to Towcester who finish first and are promoted to division one. Towcester were represented by Brent Hill. Mike Penny, Jean Raven, Derek Wright, Graham Lott, Ray Heath, Virginia Crouch, Myra Tippping, Bob Ansell, Louise Boyle, Lynda Riecken  and Alan Yates.

Well done Stamford F (Fiona Parker, Lynda McNally, Jenny Harding, Anne Ramamoorthy) who won Division 3.  They needed 7 VPs or more from their final match to finish top and although they lost their 8 VPs saw them home.

Many thanks to all the many players who represented their clubs in the 16 teams  that entered this year. Special thanks to team captains for organising the fixtures and to Gary Upton, the league secretary.

This year's final of the Broke Cup (County teams of 4 knock out) was a re-run of last year's Betts Bowl final, Chadwick (Bill, Don McFarlane, Trevor Thrower, Tim Durdin) v Gibson (Joan, Ben Gibson, David Banks, Marlene Jones). The two matches proceeded on similar lines. In both cases, Chadwick took an early lead only to be pegged back. Their half time lead of 17 IMPs soon evaporated and with 4 boards to play Gibson led by 7. However, a late rally saw Chadwick home by 8 IMPs. 

Thanks to Mark Tilley for directing a match played in the right spirit.

The victorious team pictured below (L to R Bill, Don, Tim, Trevor) qualify to represent Northants in the Pachabo Cup.

Many congratulation to Maggie Jones and Dan Baines who won the Eden Cup and are crowned County Pairs Champions. They finished with the impressive score of 62.78% after 45 boards. 

Well done also to second placed pair Chris Wormleighton and Tim Durdin and to Graham Froggett and Gerry Kingston who finished third.

Full results may be found here.

The winners are pictured smiling below.

After a late withdrawal, eight teams of four competed for the Kettering Cup on Sunday 15th.

Congratulations to the Towcester team of Derek Wright, Jean Raven, Lynne and Chris Button who finished well clear of the field.

L to R: James Spencer, Angela Abbott, Helen Skelton, Paul Collins, Doreen Simpson, Jane Reeve, Martin Brayshaw, Gill Webb

Congratulations to the Stamford B team who won the Lakeland on 15 February 2026 and qualified for the Garden Cities Regional Final.

The result:

Stamford B, 56 VPs
Kettering, 55
Stamford A, 49
Northampton, 35
Bourne, 5