Oxfordshire received a tough draw in the recent Tollemache, being picked in a section including Kent and Surrey and they were just the unseeded teams! The section also included three familiar Dawes League teams, Worcestershire, Leicestershire and Warwickshire. Stuart McPhee was particularly keen to do well against Worcestershire having been "transferred" from them at the end of last season.

For the moment this is just a short report on what happened. As soon as term finishes I will write up a few of the many interesting hands that cropped up over the weekend.

Oxfordshire’s section contained nine teams with the top two to qualify for the finals. The format of the competition is 16 six board rounds forming a double round robin. The following table shows the results.

The first session consisted of one match against each of the first six teams in the table. At this stage Oxfordshire were doing well especially against the strong Hampshire team.

Unfortunately after dinner our fortunes took a turn for the worse with two matches against each of Warwickshire and Surrey. Both of these teams fielded a number of high quality pairs.

Still Sunday was another day and with a second match against the teams we had played in the first session there were still plenty of VPs at stake even if qualification was unlikely. Maybe we could turn around some of the matches we were losing? We had a huge set against Hertfordshire, ending up winning that match by about twice as much as we had been losing overnight. There were also very creditable performances against Leicestershire and Kent. Sadly we lost all our lead and more to Lancashire and Hampshire but just held on against Worcestershire to win by a solitary imp.

In the end we finished with 62vps which places us seventh above Lancashire and Hertfordshire. The two qualifiers were Leicestershire and Warwickshire. Although finishing seventh out of a group of nine may look at first sight disappointing, many of the matches were very close. Overall the team made very few mistakes but a combination of bad luck and getting several tough decisions wrong proved extremely expensive. Unfortunately much of the bad luck and many of the tough decisions were in the slam zone.

This was the first time I have been NPC of any team and I would like to thank all members of the team both for playing and for making my job as captain as simple as possible.

Oxfordshire: Brian Claridge and John Williams, Alex and Paul Fearnhead, Mike Goldsmith and Nick Smith, Sandra Landy and Abbey Walker, Richard Lonsdale and Stuart McPhee, NPC Steve Noble.