Nopesport

On Sunday all of East Anglia's clubs descended on Warren Wood, together with a few others from further afield, to battle it out for a place in the CompassSport Cup final. With no less than seven controls visible in the large felled area through which all the courses finished, there was plenty of interest for the spectators who braved the squally showers.

Fast times were expected in the gently sloping terrain, with only a couple of small areas of intricate depressions to break up competitors' flat-out rhythm, and the leaders in all classes duly delivered - from the 5.4min/km of Neil Northrop in the Men's Open to the 6.3min/km in which Edward Louth won the M/W14- course.

Northrop (WAOC) beat ShUOC team-mate Chris Sellens (SOS) by just two seconds, while in the Women's Open Liz Day (NOC) had a much more comfortable winning margin of nearly five minutes. Juniors took second and third places on both open courses, making a mockery of the new classes which would have M/W18s running Light Green instead...

With four individual course winners (Day, Mike Napier, Alison O'Neil and Andrew Llewellyn) and as top scoring team on five of the seven courses NOC won through to the final as expected despite fielding a relatively small team in terms of numbers, with a margin of 56 points over WAOC. In the
Trophy competition, last year's final runners-up SOS qualified very comfortably with a massive 186 point margin over both CHIG and SMOC.
Apparently SOS are getting very close to the maximum number of members allowed for entry to the smaller clubs' competition, so maybe next year they will present a new challenge to the region's larger clubs in the Cup.

Congratulations to both winning teams, and good luck for the final. Full results can be found here

Thanks to Mark C for the report and photos. Check the gallery for a map of the area, and course 1.