Peggy Bayer 2023 - Round 9 Scotland vs England

First, team photos from today:

Scotland Peggy Bayer (U21)
Jamie Day, Michael Kennedy, Harry Stuart, Al Duncan, Kevin Ren

Scotland Junior Camrose (U25) team plus NPC Alisdair

I am now away from the event (work Monday morning) so followed this last match on my phone on a replacement bus service somewhere in North-West England. 

With another new face, Tamsin Munro was promoted to our U21 team it was an untested quartet hoping to upset the runaway leaders England in the final match. 

We got off to a great start, as did Scotland U25, also playing against England. The final result in our match was England 47 IMPS, Scotland 45 IMPs. Not bad turnover for 16 boards. Could we have won? Who knows, but a great result. The final standings are therefore

For those 99 Victory points we beat Northern Ireland three out of three times (just), Ireland twice, and England no times (nearly at the end though).

In the U25 Scotland heroically held on to beat England in the last match and end the event on a high. Their final standings:

Playing each team twice, Scotland scored one great win against both England and EBU Juniors, and surprisingly the only team they didn't beat was Wales.

As the players have dinner and prepare for the closing ceremony, here are some of my reflections on the whole event.

Great to play in person. I met a few people I've seen online who knew me by name but had never met me. I was starstruck by seeing Sally Brock. Many of the Juniors I've seen in online matches and were very friendly. There is definitely a community of adults working hard to promote Junior bridge.

The standard was not as high as at the European Junior Championships. No big surprise there. But as Michael on our team said, that meant that we could actually win a match which was nice.

The bridge all went very smoothly. Well done to the tournament directors and anyone else working behind the scenes. The only hiccup was that at one point we were scoring 16 board matches on a 12 board victory point scale (using last year's spreadsheet). It was me who noticed this and pointed it out, even though it cost my team some fraction of a victory point. 

The hotel had perhaps taken on more than they could handle and struggled somewhat with the meals, with the hardworking staff having to work extremely hard to serve everyone. The first dinner was in fact not even finished before the bridge began (I got a lemon meringue pie and Ireland pocketed one each for later but most didn't get dessert).

Scotland showed some promise for the future. Our U25 team I would say need to be more disciplined in the bidding. They forgot their system a few times or bid on inappropriate hands and punted far too many slams. But they have a huge amount of talent and can beat good teams. The U21 team was disciplined in bidding, and I think have the most to learn from more solid declarer play and defence. As non-playing captain they were very easy to manage.

England did the right thing fielding a weaker team - their U16 played in the U21, and still won it but had a few close matches (and famously lost to Northern Ireland, and nearly to us at the end).

I have just been sent a message about a hand to feature on the blog, but that will have to be for another time, I'm signing off now until next year.