The increasingly popular Manchester Firstball Tournament (26 teams entered this year from around the country) was played on the weekend of 12-13 April at Parrs Wood High School in Didbury, and titles were won by teams from Manchester, Nottingham and Leeds.
The weather was just about good enough – cloudy, cold, a little rain, but mostly dry.
Awards
Title and prizes were won as follows:
Gold Winner: Greensox (Manchester)
Gold Runner-up: Mavericks (Manchester)
Gold MVPs: Liz Knight and Danny Gunn (Greensox)
Silver Winner: Sheriffs (Nottingham)
Silver Runner-up: Bullfrogs (Manchester)
Silver MVPs: Beth and Lee (Sheriffs)
Bronze Winner: Lightning (Leeds)
Bronze Runner-up: Thunder 2 (Manchester)
Bronze MVPs: Charlotte Green (Thunder), Marcus Robertson (Lightning)
Accidents
MSL League Head Harry Somers writes:
The tournament will unfortunately be remembered for a number of accidents, one of which removed the tournament organizer, Sandra Jones. An ambulance had been called to deal with a player’s injury, and as Sandra was directing the ambulance onto the field she tripped over a boulder and broke her ankle, a triple fracture requiring an operation. A mad scramble to find someone to take over Sandra's job found two people who enjoyed it enough to be in line to help out on future occasions.
Another memorable injury saw an air ambulance arrive on the field – not because of the seriousness of the injury, but because they had apparently run out of road ambulances.
On a happier note, what used to be our local pre-season warm-up is now attracting teams from elsewhere, with nine of the 26 entries travelling to Manchester for the event. Because of the numbers, it was decided to split the tournament into three groups (eight teams in Comp and the rest in two levels of Rec), with teams playing a full round-robin in their respective divisions before progressing to seeded knock-out rounds.
The Greensox win in the Comp Division was notable for the fact that, having gone 0-4 on the first day, they turned it around on the Sunday, going unbeaten to lift the trophy.
