We had great attendance for this game even though we had to have a last-minute venue change from the original booking at Shelley Beach Golf Club.

Newcastle arrived with 39 players and the NSW team consisted of 22 players, which meant we had 11 live matches to decide who holds the trophy for the next 12 months.

The course was in repair mode somewhat still recovering from the rain bomb which hit the east coast late last week and dumped almost a foot of rain all over. Having said that the course presented well having just hosted the NSW women’s tournament 10 days ago.

The weather was a different story with a strong southerly wind turning into a gale as the afternoon progressed, and even brought some showers for the last few holes. The temperature plummeted as the wind grew stronger and made the pleasure of a game of golf rather uncomfortable.

As expected, the wind made scoring very difficult and that was reflected in the results with no one playing to their handicap and the average score being in the mid-20s.

In the end Newcastle prevailed again to retain the cup winning 7.5 games to NSW 3.5, which was a strong result for them given Graeme Degnan and Michael Tunna having an aggregate of 67 points, the best of the day and Ken Burns and Anthony Dodds coming in third with an aggregate of 56 points.

The best individual scores for NSW on the day was Michael Tunna shooting 35 points and Graeme Degnan managing a 32 pointer in the wind. Col Billyard , Chris Billyard and Simon Flack managed great shots to collect three of the NTP prizes.

Another great catch up with our friends from Newcastle and we look forward to catching up with them again for this year’s Hornibrook in October.

Hope to see you all at our next game at Stone Cutters ridge on Wednesday the 8^th of May.

Happy golfing,

Garry Gibson

Captain MB&E Golf Club.