The main innovation at the Club in 2018/19 has been the switch of the monthly Teams event to a Swiss format with an external professional TD.  This has proved to be a great success with Team numbers consistently significantly above previous years.  It is planned to maintain the format in 2019/10.

The end of the competition year at St. Albans finalised the various Ladder winners, remarkablyalmost identically to 2018/19 which is very unusal.  Top honours go to our Pairs winners, Stan & Tara Harding for the second year running and the Teams where Bob Turnham and Harry Silverman successfully formed a new squad with Sara Barnett and Jill Mumford to win, for Bob and Harry this is now an incredible ten years on the run.  Bob Turnham also won the Individual Ladder with Steve Lambert completing the list winning the Roy Seaman. Both Bob and Steve also retained the awards from the previous year.

The highest socre of the year came from Gill & Steve Lambert with 71.66%, yet again a repeat of 2017/18 and Annette Sleaford and Gina Woodhead achieved the single best performance of the year against NGS expectation with + 19.73.  A special mention should also go to Hilary & Paul Nesbitt who achieved three 70% plus scores in the year.

Our individual Trophy events were won by Tess Alexander and Tony Shields (IMP Pairs), Jane Scaysbrook and John Mathews (Anniversary Pairs) and Hilary and Paul Nesbitt (Gerald Everitt Memorial & Swiss Pairs).

All of the above events will be run again in 2019/20 with the addition of a new Trophy, The Tarastan Shield.  This will be awarded to the played with the best XImps performance in Teams events during the year.  Thanks to Tara & Stan Harding for donating the Trophy.

At a representatvie level the highlight of the year was the victory of St. Albans Team of Eight in the HBA Desmond Flockhart Trophy.  Congratulations to Stan & Tara Harding, Susan Dow & John Mathews, Denis King & James Rogers and Sara Barnett & Harry Silverman

Overall and excellent competitive year for the club with record numbers of players and we look forward to an even better 2019/20.

Steve Lambert

Competitions