There were many problems with personnel and I was grateful late on to Michael Goldsmith for agreeing to play with Nick Perceval-Price when Marian Day had to pull out, to the two Davids - Flower and Stead - for stepping in when I had to withdraw and finally to Steve Noble and Tim Prior for agreeing to team up at almost the last minute, when Shirley Dutton was hospitalised. Somehow we got twenty-four players to the venue and the performances were highly acceptable: though the A team went down 9-11, B had a big 20-0 and C 16-4. I've now received the final league tables, which show Oxfordshire as follows -

Overall I would say that we remain agonisingly close to a major breakthrough, if we could get all our top players turning out regularly in regular partnerships. The encouraging factor is that we now have so many pairs coming through behind them.

A disappointing feature of the Staffs match was that they had dealt different boards for A, B and C which means that a full report is no longer possible (96 boards in play) - and it would have been meaningful to many fewer players anyway - and the cross-IMPing is particularly meaningless when comparisons are available only within teams of eight. Nonetheless I'm grateful to Michael Robinson for working it all out. I don't think the figures merit publication this time (though I'll be happy to tell anyone who wants to know how they scored). I should say, however, that the big results came (in no particular order) from Noble/Prior, Cooper/Pfeifer, Brown/Keep, Gascoyne/Squires, Goldsmith/P-P, Slater/Stephens and Webley/Wilkes - well done to all of them. I did complain to the League Secretary about the dealing and he has now written to all counties urging them to ensure that the same hands are available for all three matches in future.

The dates remain as published in my last letter, except that we have offered the new (rejoined) county Lincolnshire a revised date of 17th July 2005 rather than the announced one of 15th January 2006 - this in answer to their request for a change of date. We don't know the answer yet, but availability returns will go out next month. Watch this space. As usual, we'll be inviting clubs to put forward new pairs who might want to join the squad but we'll remain reliant, of course, on the same players who have served us so well in recent times. Thank you all.