As many people know, John and I met at the Gold Coast Congress eight years ago, so it's always somewhat of a sentimental journey for us, despite the fact that we haven't really distinguished ourselves in the past, although John, playing with his original team, had come second in the Restricted.
This time we played with Sue and Ken Moffitt, a really interesting couple who live in the Northern Territory. Sue has achieved local fame for writing a book called "Darwin in the Wet".We met them at the Darwin Congress last year, and, as we all got on well, decided to play together.
We were playing in the Intermediate Teams and our first round was a disaster earning only 2 1/2 points out of a possible 20. We were placed 84 out of 94. Not particularly propitious! However we gradually crawled our way up over the next few rounds until we were coming 19th after the fourth round.
After four more rounds we were running second and then for the four last rounds we made and retained first place! To say we were gob-smacked would be an understatement. Also John and I were particularly chuffed that on the pairs datum we were running second out of 188.
We still, of course, had to play in the final with the team that came second. This takes place in a smallish room with four lots of finals from Seniors, Intermediate, Restricted and Novice all taking place at once. Not only were our mobile phones to be switched off they had to be handed to the room manager! Despite our apprehension it was not as daunting as we thought it would be. We played four rounds of 12 boards each, and even though everyone is given a "seating choice" we ended up playing opposite the same people for all the rounds. They were a very pleasant team from Coffs Harbour.
I was playing south and during the entire day had very very few cards. East/west had the majority of points and Sue Moffitt did the lion's share of playing and did it superbly. We won the first three rounds which gave us a comfortable lead and then lost the last but won by 100.1 to 74.
Apart from the bridge the atmosphere with all the Peninsula players was wonderful. Catherine had organised a dinner at the Surf Club on the Monday night and there were 20 or so people there. Everyone is so supportive and enthusiastic and as we walked around Broadbeach after dinner each night we'd run into so many friendly faces offering encouragement. Everyone is interested in what the others are doing, it really just one big bridge family.
The dinner dance on Saturday night was terrific. We sat with Lynn and Brent Baker and Anne Small and Ron Smith and their two team mates, Ano and Derek, who'd come down from Thailand to play with them. The highlight for us of course was the presentation of the trophy. It was a truly memorable night.
Reported by Margaret Rogers
