ab fab Kent Classic 2009 at Lordswood

Thank you ab fab flowers for the financial support that made such a big event possible. Kent President Martin Eggleton and Competition Organiser David Baxter present Tony Martin of ab fab flowers with a gift in appreciation of his support.

The fourth running of the Kent Classic saw it moved this year from Detling in the winter to Lords Wood in the summer.

The centre piece of the competition was the Gold Cup with its £500 top prize. In the first stage of the event teams were seeded into 8 pools with the pool winners qualifying for the Gold cup

quarter finals. Second and third placed teams went into the silver sections and the other teams into the bronze and consolage.

An early surprise was the number one seeds from Dunkerque losing their second pool game to the Hartley team of Colin Senneck, Joyce and Mick Nash who then deservedly went on to qualify for the Gold quarter final. However, with the number 2,3,4,7 and 8 seeds all winning through to their QF places it was hard fought pétanque all the way to the final. Two teams showing up well in the QF were 24 (Chalkly, Wing, Horrigan,Allen) and 27 (Glover, Binney and Seville) with wins of 13-6 and 13-8 respectively they then went on to win their semi-finals. In the final, team 24 started weakly but the their opponents were not able to capitalise and in the end the experienced team of Wing, Horrigan and Allen won through over their more youthful opponents.

With so much to play for it was no surprise that concentration, especially when pointing was going to be a crucial factor. Our photographer Jack Milner caught several examples...

Lee Jamieson Simon Bird Matt Eversden

Allan Newland Rachide Hannache Toni Gates

We were pleased to see the England ladies team using the Classic as part of their preparation for the World Championships. W e wish them every success in Thailand on November 12-15th

Pictured left to right, Vanessa Webb, Angie Jamieson and Debbie Elcome.

A comprehensive list of the prize winners is on the web site as well as a photo gallery of the prize winners.

Innovations this year

The curtailment.- Games were limited to 75 minutes plus an end. 8 games out of 106 were curtailed short of a score of 13. In five the winning team had reached 12, two were at 11 and one the final score was only 7-5. From an organisational point of view this worked very well as all games could proceed as planned.

The seeding. This year we seeded the top 8 as 1 to 8 based on previous year's performance, form and reputation and assigned one to each pool. We then assigned 8 teams to be 9= seeds and they were randomly assigned one to each pool. The remaining teams were then drawn into the pools. Organisationally this was quite straight forward and worked well for us, the seedings worked out pretty well also apart from the number 1 seeds from Dunkerque who had a disaster and finished 29th!. 4 of the top 8 seeds finished in the top 8 and 13 of the seeds finished in the top 15. The highest placed unseeded team was the East Sussex team of Alfred, Mann and Hogan (below with Tony martin) who finished 10th.

The finishing position of all the field has been calculated and is listed in the table below

We look forward to seeing you next year.

Results of the whole field

Posn 09

Team No. Player 1 Player 2 Player 3 Player 4

Posn 07

Posn 08

1 24 Dave Chalkly Matt Horrigan Barry Wing Chris Allen 52 27 Darryl Glover Dean Seville Richard Binney 93 2 Nic Baxter Sofiane Lachani Simon Bird 2 23 9 Mick Nash Joyce Nash Colin Senneck 11 135 29 Sean Prendergast Ben Treend Trevor Treend 185 32 Sylvan Borsi Rachide Hannache Lee Jamieson 255 36 Geoff Booth Chris Watkins Gary Atkinson 43 585 44 Steve Noel Miles Gooda Andy Goodship 3 39 20 Adrian Emson Myra Huntley Jeremy Huntley 19 2110 12 David Alfred Tony Mann Fergal Hogan11 42 Richard King Neil Phillips Kris Smith 21 3111 43 Bruce Rowland Yousseff Boussba Mehdi Bira13 3 Angie Jamieson Debbie Elcomb Vanessa Webb 1713 35 Chris Skingley Christine Grantham Geoff Grout13 39 Trevor Blows Lorne Gibson Adam Buxton 3713 41 Jeff Mitchell Aaron Mitchell Rob Willison17 23 Mike Tull Ashley O'dell Harrison Ash Matt Slater 35 1318 26 Alan Cregeen Michele Cregeen Alex Bruce 3919 14 Angie Gaughan John Gaughan Chris best Pete Best19 33 Jamie Lewis Matt Eversden Alan Newland21 10 Barry Soilleux Elaine Jackson Neville Plummer Pam Plummer 50 7121 15 John Fowers Eileen Fowers Gill Pearson 4821 31 Kim Elcome Graham Elcome Ray Austen 4 1121 40 John Holborn Daren Frost Mike Sharratt Barbara Sharratt25 8 Emma Jones Toni Gates Garry Gould26 34 Wendy Mannering Kieran Maggs Simon Mannering27 18 Babs Carr Jim Carr Hilda Griffiths 67 3527 22 Frank Charlesworth Christine Peat David Wicks Ron Phelps 43 3829 1 Jean-Christian Evrard Michaël Evrard Sébastien Hautecoeur Didier Gens 1 129 21 D Lipman M Lipman Jeff Fox 2529 25 John Adam Lois Adam Mick Jennings 5529 38 Tony Burdett Jackie Mears Richard Hannam33 30 Andy Mills Alex Mills Paul Chapman34 19 Chris Wilcox Richard Foulsham Pauline Baxter Pam Treend 30 2735 28 Mike Capelin Deb Capelin Peter Iles36 7 John Middleton John Hines Paul Collins 6036 37 Ben Littley Josh Littley Amy Huntley 57 3138 4 Mick Weston Eric Hatfield Larry Belcher Innes Clarke 25 4538 5 David Edgington Margaret Carter Eric Carter38 11 Sharon Fane Tony Richards Rob Fox 6438 13 Merle Sullivan Mary McDonald Mark Barlow 3542 6 Phyllis Edgington Colin Pigden Keith Selmes42 16 Gordon Angell Alan Rush David Brooks42 17 Ken Potter John Griffiths Ron Yates 43 64