2016 Captain’s vs Chairman’s Annual Challenge Cup

The third annual Captains vs Chairman's Challenge Cup took place in December. This is an annual event where the men’s and ladies’ Captains Julian Tanner and Rachel Sutcliffe take on Dave Cross’ Chairman’s team.

Photos for all matches can be viewed in the Gallery here. 

The game is open to all players who then go into the pool, a coin toss then decides who will have the first pick which this year was won by the captains, the chairman then gets to pick the next player to play the number one pick and then has the first pick for the second game and so on. The team that wins the most matches wins the overall trophy giving the chairman or the captain annual bragging rights.

This year there were 64 players in 32 matches who played on court throughout the afternoon. To ensure all the people knew who were on their team black or white sweatbands denoted the two teams. This is a great event where usual team mates can be pitted against each other on opposing teams and usual supporters can cheer against their normal team members.

Dave’s chairman’s team started very strongly winning 6 of the first seven matches to be played with some very close encounters including Mark Sutcliffe playing for the chairman’s team having a great game against Vivi Thomas winning in the 5^th game with a big crowd cheering on the two players.

Captain Rachel won a close game against Sid Baidwan 3-2 to carry on her winning streak in these matches. The captain’s team bounced back in the next few games winning 5 of the next 6 matches to bring the games very tight to have the chairman’s team leading 7 matches to 6 with close games with the captains Martin Mrosek beating Nick Organ 3-2.

In the middle matches the chairman’s team again won many of their matches winning 9 of the next 10 which included Nigel Steffensen and Graham Mountford winning in close games. The chairman himself won his game 3-0 against KK and Andrew Wood played in a great game beating Edward Griffiths 3-1.

Captain Julian had a hard game vs Jason Brown but couldn’t manage to win after Jason’s great running game pipped the captain 3-1. The score at this stage after 23 games 16 to 7 to the chariman’s team which meant that they could not lose overall.  Jason Lam gave the captains team a bit of hope winning the next match 3-0 vs William Fan. But the next games saw the chairman’s team win overall with Sean Soo beating Chris Caves to ensure the chairman retained the trophy and now has won all the three competitions.

The top players from the captains’ team brought the overall score closer with Rudi beating Hoi Fai; Lincoln Chan beating Nathan L’Huillier and Eric Ho beating Malcolm Kerr.

The overall score was 20 to 12 to the Chairman. The trophy was presented to Dave Cross by section sponsor Ian Burns from St James’s Place who enjoyed watching the games. Well done to all who took part in the matches. A few after squash beverages were enjoyed by the participants who could rue their missed opportunity of winning or bask in the glory of their win.

The captains will be looking for revenge in the next encounter to win the trophy and stop the chairman’s unbeaten run.

Chairman's Winning Team

Match Results