Suffolk v Cambs & Hunts (6 January 2019)

Captain's report by Rick Hanley

The words 'Happy New Year' rang rather hollow for the Suffolk County bridge team in their first outing of 2019 against Cambs & Hunts in Trumpington. All three teams were soundly defeated with only one out of the 12 Suffolk pairs achieving a positive cross-imp score. 

The A-team opened brightly and enjoyed a small lead after the first stanza against formidable opposition. Unfortunately, they were then outplayed for the rest of the afternoon suffering their heaviest defeat (0-20) for over 12 months. Suffolk fielded a strongish-looking B-team but they were never ahead in the match and lost 3-17. There was some fun and games in the C-team who lost 5-15. The one bright spot for Suffolk was an outstanding performance (+44 imps) by Jo Harpur and Conor Bignell despite three cold slams being bid against them.

A bright spot for the future of bridge in East Anglia was the appearance of the highly promising juniors, Jamie and Liam Fegarty. Jamie and Liam recently represented England in the under-16 World Youth Bridge Team Championships in China and were the top cross-imp performers in the Cambs and Hunts C-team. They dealt ruthlessly with an overstretching Suffolk pair in the first stanza, extracting penalties of 800 and 1100. Both of these Suffolk players had performed extremely well in the previous match against Essex. But when its not your day, its not your day, and they went for minus 1400 in an equally challenging contract later in the day.

Finally, and most important, many thanks to Christine Cooke and Roger Bacon who were only drafted into the C-team 4 hours before the start of the match and produced a highly creditable performance on their debut for the county team.