New intercounty team champions crowned at wolverhampton!

*DEVON RETAIN THE OPEN TITLE, WILTSHIRE & YORKSHIRE GRAB THEIR FIRST*

A busy weekend of Intercounty team Racketball matches took place at Wolverhampton Tennis & Squash Club on the 15th & 16th June, with the Open, B Grade and Ladies Intercounty titles up for grabs. It was our busiest year to date of Intercounty action, with 18 teams battling it out across the event, and there were some brilliant games for all to watch across the 6 courts at the venue.

In the A Grade, the standout battles were:

- brutal first round battles between Morris and Haggarty in Shrops vs Warks (Haggarty managing to overturn a 0/2 deficeit to take down the O50s top dog,) and between Moverly and Cutting in Yorks vs Kent, where Fiona did likewise come back from 2/0 down to take a 12/10 in the 5th win vs a very valiant effort from Josh. Dives included!
Bonus note to the Jones vs Norton battle at #2 string which was another 5 set throwdown, which ultimately decided the overall tie result in Yorkshire's favour as Knocker won 3/2.

- a really high quality battle at #1 string between Miles Jenkins (Surrey) & Guy Pearson (Warks) in the afternoon, with Jenkins' physicality and relentless pace of play proved too much for the ball skill and creativity of Pearson, beating him 3/1. 

- A very tight Final between Surrey and Devon, where Surrey took 3rd & 4th string to put a huge amount of pressure on the reigning Champions, but Devon through solid performances from Snell, Gregory and Harris, managed to see it through with a 3/2 overall team win!


The Ladies had four different teams in for the first time and with such a positive weekend of games we are hopeful of building on this success and introducing more next year! Some of their highlights were:

- Cornwall taking down Devon 8 games to 6 in the all Southern jam first vs cream first derby battle!

- A brilliantly entertaining Lincs vs Yorks fixture with a great 5 set Doubles match win to Yorkshire to round off the match.

- Devon doing well to push Yorkshire close in the final match on the Sunday, only just losing out to the overall Champions 7 games to 10 with several tight 3/2 battles involved.


And finally the B Grade, where it was great to see lots of returning faces from last year's inaugral event, plus some new sides and line ups. Events of note were...

- Wiltshire's ability to grind out the result they needed! This year's Champions were pushed all the way in each of their fixtures, taking down Derbyshire 10/8, Yorkshire 10/9 and then ''chopping'' (not really) Surrey 11/5 in the Final! Kudos to Nev Buckle's side with some big perfomances from all throughout, notably Adam Giles & Calli Smith at 1 & 2 who went undefeated all weekend, with Calli using the experience to spend approximately 453667278463 hours on court each match... (Schedule destroyer...)

- The Surrey B & Shropshire B Semi final was another tight battle, finishing 8/6 to the eventual finalists, coming down to overall games countback after it finished 2/2 in match wins!

All in all, a really great weekend of Racketball and catching up with loads of our Series regulars and not so regulars. A huge thank you to Wolverhampton Club and Mike Harris (Mr Squash Mike Harris that is) for hosting us so excellently. It's a lovely venue and they are really pushing hard on all things Squash & Racketball there so an incredibly positive set up.

Also thank you to all of our county Captains and Managers for their hard work in getting sides together and chasing up players. It is a thankless task sometimes and your efforts are greatly appreciated! 

We will be back on the same weekend next year (14th & 15th June 2025) so get the date in your diaries, we hope to build it bigger and better!

Full results can be found on our Intercounty page here: https://www.uk-racketball.com/inter-counties.html

Pictures and video clips from the matches can be found on our Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1390864495194434&type=3