2021 Veterans Tournament Report

2021 Winners: Torexe Saga Louts

It was great to see a return of tournament action following the 18 month hiatus. The event attracted a lot of interest selling out with 4 teams on the waiting list with 2 months to go, showing that teams were eager to get back. Unfortunately as the date drew nearer a combination of Covid isolations, injury and illness resulted in only 10 teams able to make it on the day.

The competition started with teams playing a random five other teams in a ladder format. There were many closely fought games with two thirds of matches resulting in teams scoring the bonus point for staying within 75% of the winning score. At the end of this phase four teams had each lost just one game with points scored having to be used to separate the top 3 teams. The remaining teams were all very close. Teams in 4th and 5th place and 8th and 9th place went into a play off to decide who went into the top group (1 to 4) & middle group (5 to 8).

After the play-offs there was a short break to make a presentation to Ron Richards to celebrate his 50 year contribution to the SWVA, see 50-years-not-out.

The first semi-final saw a rematch of one of the ladder matches between Wiltshire Mavericks and Saga Louts when Wiltshire Mavericks had a 2 point advantage in a very exciting game. Saga Louts upped their game in the semi-final to take a convincing win. In the second semi-final Bemi VC 2 (the youngest team in the tournament) had a comfortable win over Cheltenham and Gloucester.

This set up a final between reigning champions Saga Louts against the “youngsters” Bemi VC 2, which was very equal throughout with Saga Louts just opening up an advantage in the closing stages. Saga Louts retained their title for a very impressive 4th year in a row giving them 5 titles in all.

We continue to monitor the age demographics and whether the qualifying age is at the right level. Only one team this year didn’t use any players under 40 (which was the winners Saga Louts) and over a third of the players were over 50. Almost 10% of players were over 60, but they were balanced by an equivalent number eligible to play this year for the first time. Therefore with 60% of teams relying on players under 40 it doesn’t look like we can increase the qualifying age without a substantial impact on the number of teams we can attract.

Final Results