14/2/2007 St Valentine’s Day Slash’n’Grab, (aka ‘Wickford Challenge’)

WON 45-43, Estuary U14 Cadets v Wickford Cadets
WON 45-41, Estuary U15 Cadets v Wickford Juniors
WON 45-29, Estuary Ladies v Wickford ‘C’
Lost 37-45, Estuary Juniors v Wickford ‘B’
Lost 29-44, Estuary Mens v Wickford ‘A’

Our Ladies looked too strong for their opponents from the beginning.
All our other teams took an initial hammering, went a long way behind, and seemed certain to lose. But with great spirit, every team made a comeback and ended the stronger team. Even our Rookie Mens team made a late comeback, refused to be finished off, and actually ended looking the stronger team.

Lost 29-44, Estuary Mens v Wickford ‘A’

Wickford had arrived with their superstar/chairman Chas Read for the night!

Predictably with Chas starting off for them, Wickford stormed off into the lead, with our rookies Dave, Simon and Derek pretty shell-shocked at Chas’ lightening attacks.

But our boys showed good team spirit in helping each other work out some ideas on what to do. And in fact when Chas came on for his last fight, our Derek managed to contain him to just 2 points each.

With a combination of lunge ,fleche, ballestra and sprint (not to mention grunting), our rookies team actually ended up looking the strongest team – brilliant!

Lost 37-45, Estuary Juniors v Wickford ‘B’

Our secretary Heather volunteered to fight for Wickford for the night – and unfortunately started them off with a win! Then we found ourselves up against stalwart Essex secretary Alan Jones with his unique attacking style, and soon found ourselves trailing a massive 12 points at 25-13!

But then our juniors managed to stage a comeback. First Merlin and then Ben registered excellent wins (against Heather), and Ray managed to contain Alan Jones.

We’d managed to get ourselves back to an 8 point deficit at 32-40 going into our last fight. But for this Merlin was facing the experienced and fast-moving Steve Clark. He actually managed a stunning 5 points against him to end the match 37-45!

An absolutely brilliant comeback from our juniors against really established fencers.

The Estuary Amazons looked too strong for Wickford ‘C’ from the start!

Despite her long absence, a returning Lynn was able to hold her own, and Jazz took us into a strong 10-point lead at 25-15. Despite an attempted comeback on their part, we were still 11 points ahead at 40-29 going into our last fight, and (against Nick) our Coco stormed us past the finishing line without even conceding a point.

Excellent!

WON 45-41, Estuary U15 Cadets v Wickford Juniors

In this match, our cadets lost their first fight 2-5 and were then up against U14 Essex Bronze medallist Gareth King! Our Chris promptly beat him.

From then on, this was a hard fought match for everyone. Wickford struggled into a 5 point lead at 15-20. Chris then brought the deficit down to 2 for us, before Liam pulled out a stunning 7-1 fight to put us into a 3 point lead at 33-30. Chris nudged us further ahead to 40-33.

Our final fight was against the dreaded Gareth, but Sam did very well to keep his nerve and bring us home for a victory.

WON 45-43, Estuary U14 Cadets v Wickford Cadets

This match swung wildly from first Wickford pulling ahead, then Larry pulling out an amazing 13 point victory to put Estuary ahead, then Wickford staging a comeback to go ahead again.

Before the last fight, Estuary were one single point ahead. Up stepped our Jack, nerves a-jangling, to try to hang on for us. It was a really tense fight that could have gone either way, but as the clock ticked on, Larry got the measure of their attacks, and with 20 seconds left pulled out a match-winning hit for us. Very well done by everyone.