Unusually (as my club colleagues will agree) I have very little to say! Apart from a little bit of early morning control vandalism on the yellow course and some minor land access problems on Saturday the event was trouble free and smooth running.

I would be grateful if the clubs who have not yet paid for their entries would pay as soon as possible - we need the money!

My thanks to Chris Burden for his "stress free" controlling and to my club colleague Simon for the well planned courses and to the LEI team for their work on the day.

Congratulations to SYO for their Cup win and FVO for the Trophy win.

Chris Phillips

Thank you to Leicester for effectively engaging with the weather gods and efficiently providing an excellent inter-club competition with a great ambience.

Congratulations to SYO and FVO for their victories. It was great to see LVO making the trip across from Northern Ireland. (They put some non-attending members of my own, much closer, club to shame! They weren't all in the FRA Relays!)

I wasn't aware of the Nopesport correspondence regarding the event beforehand. Probably just as well! It was good to see that the post event comments agree that the doomsayer's predictions were somewhat off mark.

When I visited the area a year ago it proved not to be the bramblefest that I was expecting. Indeed it was even better than now - some very recent forestry work has resulted in localised brashings where there had previously been unimpeded running.

The area had sufficient good runnable sections to make for a good fast interclub competition. Simon's planning made the most of the opportunities the area afforded.

Apologies to some of the earlier competitors on the Women's Open who were delayed by an encounter with a local gamekeeper. It was only on Saturday that we learnt that one control was not on Forestry Enterprise land, when I encountered the gamekeeper beside the control. He was reasonableness itself, when I explained what was going on, but unfortunately I only told him which way the men would be approaching the control and overlooked that it was also used by the women coming from a different direction - hence his on the day bemusement. Thank you to those competitors affected who seem to have explained the situation to him so reasonably.

Chris Burden