European Club Championships, Paderborn, 2005

NEW POINT SYSTEM REVIVES EURO CLUB CHAMPIONSHIPS

This week Paderborn in Germany will host what will probably be the best-ever European Club Championships, where 25 men’s and women’s teams from the top national clubs will be vying for the title of European champion.

There have been other memorable ECCs, specially one in Rennes where the owner of the club was also a restaurateur, so the food served in his clubs was sensational.

But the Paderborn club is run by Norman Farthing, a limey, who has been in Germany a long time. When it comes to promotion and finding sponsors, this man is dynamite. Last year in Lenz, the site of the 2004 event, he told me how he secured sponsorship for his club’s teams and how he got the whole community involved in Paderborn squash. This year his preparations are mind-boggling. For example, he has requested from each team the email addresses of their local papers, radio and tv stations. His publicity machine will keep every country up-to-date with the progress of their champions. This is unheard of, even from the organizers of major tournaments. There are two breweries laid on as sponsor (this is, after all, Germany) and knowing Farthing, a dozen other sponsors involved so that the event runs like a Rolls Royce and it doesn’t cost Paderborn a penny.
Hell, with this sort of expertise, maybe Farthing should run world squash.

So the scene is set in a club with ten courts and a four wall glass court installed with seating for six hundred people. More importantly, the European Squash Federation (ESF) have brought in rules that have stopped rich clubs buying the title.

I remember just four years ago Jacques Fontaine, president of the French Squash Federation and owner of the St Cloud club in Paris (conflict of interest? You bet!) arrived at the championships with a men’s team that consisted of top ten players which included Jonathon Power. Power never even played but still got his check for $2000!

(Back then, ST Cloud and Rouen went head to head with check books, and between them signed the world’s top 15 players. The final of the French club championships usually had Peter Nicol playing Power).

It got to the point where this check-book approach was destroying the event. Clubs from other countries who could not compete against this big-money approach to team building, stopped entering and the event was in danger of disappearing altogether. So Chris Stahl and his committee at the ESF took drastic steps and brought in a points system. Each 4-player team is allow 60 points and players are graded according to present ranking and ability. A top twenty player is worth 30 points, ranking between 21 and 50, 20 points, 51 to 100 is weighted at 15 points and over 101 ten points. All other players are five pointers.

This immediately stops a club from using two top ten players. Indeed, using a top tenner and another player in the 20- 50 group uses up 50 points meaning that the other two players must be five pointers, that is, outside the top 150.

THE MENS LINEUPS

Let’s take the host club, Paderborner Squash Club. They list their team as Peter Nicol (30pts), Ben Garner (20pts), Lars Harms (15 pts) and Tim Garner (10pts). Their reserves are Stefan Leifels and Lars Osthoff. Simple arithmetic shows that they cannot use both Nicol and Ben Garner; with 50 points used they have ten points left for the third and fourth strings. And they don’t have two five pointers. So at best they could field Nicol (30) Harms (15) Tim Garner (10) and Osthoff (5).

The other German team, CW Bonn Mulheim also looks impressive: David Palmer, Olli Tuominen, Simon Frenz and Christian Drakenberg. But both Palmer and Tuominen are in the top twenty, so only one can be played, leaving them vulnerable at three and four. And as Palmer is flying in for the event, Tuominen will not be playing – unless Palmer is rested.

The Hungarian entry, Rozsadambi Sport Egyesulet, looks even tastier with Gregory Gaultier, Marcus Berrett, Joey Barrington, and Julian Balb, who are worth a total of 85 points. Somebody has to go but who? In fact, the latest news is that Peter Genever is joining the squad. As he has retired from the circuit he may get in as a ten pointer, but even then the team would be reduced to Berrett,(20), Barrington (20), Genever (10) and Andras Torok (10). In fact I can’t see how they can play Gaultier at all without seriously weakening the team.

So now we come to the shrewd team, Colets Health and Fitness of Surrey, the England champs. [I should declare a slight bias here: this is the club where I play my squash and on occasions, act as their press officer].

But those who read the first part of this preview know that David Peck is the most successful team manager in England and he reads the rules carefully. When he first saw the team sheets he laughed, knowing that some clubs had not read the rules and were ‘overstaffed’.

Colets’ team of Alex Gough (20), Scott Handley (15), Mark Cairns (10) Danny Meddings (10) and Clive Ewings (1o) is about as shrewd as you can get. Just look at those ten pointers – Cairns, Medding and Ewings – two of them are ex internationals and world top twenty players. Cairns and Meddings are no longer on the circuit, but they are still playing squash to a very high degree. With Gough and Handley at one and two, Colets can always count on at least one of them winning, and Cairns and Meddings bankers at three and four, Colets have the sort of strength in depth that has seen them clean up in county leagues and national championships.

Last year the bad seedings saw Colets play Paderborn in the semis and lose on point countback. It was the match that should have been the final. Colets are hoping this year that the seedings committee get it right so that the two top teams on form meet in the final.

The final seedings will not be known until the team orders are posted.

WOMEN'S PREVIEW
IN the women’s competition CW Bonn-Mulheim of Germany have listed Linda Elriani, Sarah Fitz-Gerald, Sabine Tilman and Karin Beriere. The women play just three strings and if this club fields their top three they will waltz it. On the other hand, another German team ISC Bordersholm eV look pretty tough with Vanessa Atkinson, Annelize Naude and Katharina Witt as their top three.

However it is another England representative, Pontefract from Yorkshire that has ‘done a Colets’ with strength in depth: Rebecca Botwright, Lauren Siddall, Kirsty McPhee and Deon Saffery. These are not starry names, but they are all very experienced on the international scene. Saffery played for England at the World Junior team championship in July.

For the dark horse watch the Belgian club Bateas Squash Club with Kim Hannes at one, Charlie de Rycke at two and Tine Hannes at three. A lot of talent and experience here and they could well steal it with their strength at two and three.

Action starts on Thursday…but…there is a major arts festival going on in Paderborn with a very fine jazz lineup…… I’m wondering whether Norman Farthing can arrange a TV feed into the jazz venue, so that I can…..only kidding Ron Beck. I promise to be at the club, glued to the front wall of the glass court.