WHEELERS HILL COMBINED 500 CARD TOURNAMENT

by WHEELERS HILL COMBINED | 25 Jun 2015

Our club once again hosted a third very successful annual 500 card tournament at the Sandown Park Hotel.  After a concerted telephone effort by the tournament Committee our numbers swelled to 64 players – an increase of 60% on 2014.  We welcomed for the first time representation from Beaconsfield, Berwick, Donvale Hill, East Malvern, Monash Central and Mount Waverley, all Combined clubs.

Clubs from Forest Hill Combined, Narre Warren Combined, Rosebud Ladies, Syndal Combined and Templestowe Ladies were again represented.   

With a fully computerised draw prepared ahead to distinguish the opponents, rotations and table numbers for the 8 games, it was essential that we had all 64 players arrive and it worked a treat, running very close to our time schedule.

Our President John Shrives presented all the prizes and for the second time in 3 years the Forest Hill Four Amigos, Peter Birkett, Val Boell, Shirley Jones and Gloria Lewis took out the Champion 4 team event winning 12 of a possible 16 games.  John Hungerford and Ian Turner from Beaconsfield won the pairs event winning 7 of 8 games with a points score of 3440.  The most number of Jokers was a draw between Rae Mayes (Syndal Lonesome Four) and Patricia Raab (Narre Warren M&M’s) each with 17. Robert Renshaw (Syndal) won the first Lucky Draw donated by the Sandown Park Hotel, then Femke Meyer (Syndal) won a bottle of wine, with Suzanne Gribble and Brian Brown (Wheelers Hill) and Ted Porter (Donvale) winning hair salon vouchers.

What a great day of cards, a delicious carvery lunch/afternoon tea and the opportunity of a convivial meeting between fellow Probus members.  A huge thank you to our hard working inspiration Jill Croom and her Committee of Brian Brown, Freda Butler, David Cotton, Bill Dair, Janet Jackson and Alan Taylor. 

The event would not have been possible without the great assistance of the 8 volunteers from our club on the day, Margaret Boyd, Helen Brown, Jenny Carter, Suzanne Gribble, Doug Lawrence and Margaret Tamblyn, also Robin Bray and Lynn Carter, who under some pressure all day, managed to keep up and complete the computer input plus the overhead scoreboard by calling on their PC skills despite being non 500 players.

Wheelers Hill Combined certainly ticked all the boxes, achieving its goal of an interclub event with Fun, Friendship and Fellowship.