What could be simpler? Facing an opening bid and a club raise East bid slam. My overcall of 1H was not exactly a hindrance but it is easy anyway.

Compare the difficulty after our teammates started with 1NT and North intervened with 2D showing diamonds and a major. Sandy bid 3C but with a bad diamond holding West was disinclined to bypass 3NT. I have to record that Crook junior reached the slam after Simon Spencer opened 1NT. With no intervention Daniel bid 2S showing clubs and after much science the job was done.

By contrast Irene and I had slam trouble on board 15 after an over aggressive vulnerable 4S opening on K10987543 and little else. Suitably warned I opened 3S on board 21:

East led a diamond and West switched to J of clubs covered and won by East. Now I had  two club ruffs for 10 tricks.

At our teammates table the Derbyshire North overbid with an opening 4S and made it on a similar play. The winning defence is for West to switch to trumps; East wins and plays hearts before trumps are drawn. The key to the hand is not to let declarer ruff clubs but also not let him draw trumps and run hearts. If East does continue trumps thinking his hearts may stop the suit then a good declarer will play out all his trumps and life gets nasty for East. 

That was an interesting technical hand as was board 30: 

Yet another aggressive 4S opener. At various tables North played three rounds of hearts failing lamentably to switch to clubs. Two declarers proudly told me that after that start they had drawn trumps and endplayed South with Ace and another club. South`s loss of nerve in not ducking the club had in fact followed a mistake by declarer.

William showed the way: he drew one top trump and played diamonds to establish the suit. Simple.

In the final reckoning we lost the Dawes by 18-2 so the return of regular partnerships was not great news. The Porter team faced a very strong Derbyshire second team and were arguably lucky to lose only 20-0, while the Markham team did best losing just 11-9.

On the day that history was made in the US Open golf it is probably true to say that Notts were about as far below par as Rory McIlroy.