21/01/2024
3 Counties League 2023 season report (plus some matches I forgot to write about, sorry its late):
Since the summer break I’ve been a bit lax in these reports so here’s one big one to sum-up how the remainder of our matches have gone and an overall season report as well
The season restarts:
Due to some excellent performances in the first half of the season, Hitchin went into the summer break leading all three tables (foil, epee, overall) and looked set to have another dominant season in the 3 counties league with just 4 matches remaining. In the first couple matches our excellent form continued with routine wins vs both Dacorum and Watford which saw all 3 titles within our grasp and just 2 matches remaining, one of which was against 2nd place Bedford who still had a slight chance of pipping us to the post.
Big Match Vs Bedford:
Next up was a home match against main title rivals and 2022 epee champions Bedford, who once again were leading the race the catch us up in the table. Despite a convincing 12-6 win when we faced them in the spring, Bedford are always a tricky match and would be motivated knowing that a similar score could see Hitchin claim all 3 titles in one night.
First up was foil, and despite us taking an early lead, Bedford managed to claw it back and took a close 5-4 victory meaning that the foil title would go up to the wire, and that we needed to win the epee to ensure that Bedford would be unable to catch us in the overall table.
The epee started badly with Bedford taking 2 quick 5-1 wins in the opening bouts, but the Hitchin team rallied winning 5 bouts in a row to guarantee the match would end in a draw and the Hitchin had won the overall title. However, Bedford managed to regroup the for the last 2 bouts and took them to mean the epee score was 5-4 Hitchin, meaning a 9-9 draw overall. Enough to win the overall 3 counties league title but not enough for us to claim victory in the foil and epee tables just yet.
With the Bedford match behind us we now had to wait on other results to see what result we needed to get in our final match for us to become triple champions. With Bedford and St Albans both winning their final matches of the season we now knew that going into our final match that any win in the epee would see us as epee champions, but we needed a 6-3 win or greater in foil to overturn Bedford on Indicator, as we had the same number of wins.
Final Match Vs Luton:
Heading into our final match away at Luton the team knew what was expected of them, but due to leaving for university (come on Will get where are your priorities???) and other availability issues Andy was forced to step up and fence foil as well as epee, this was a big risk as the very fabric of reality was already weakened from Muhil fencing epee earlier in the season.
Starting with the Epee our mainstay trio of Andy, Jack, and Richard managed to brush off any nerves they may have had going into the match and despite several close 5-4 bout wins managed to round-off the epee convincingly for a 7-2 win to secure us the epee title, meaning that Hitchin were the 3 counties epee champions for the first time in history.
All that was left was foil…
Having managed to source Andy some foil kit (very kindly lent by Luton) and reality remaining intact, the foil match begun. Myself, Ali, and Andy managed to maintain a lead throughout the match, but Luton fought hard and it was a tight contest with a very awkward Luton team making sure that we had to fight for every point would not be able to stroll to success as we attempted to retain the foil trophy. This meant that going into the final bout Hitchin were 5-3 up, a win in the 9th leg would see us as foil champions for the 2nd year running, defeat would mean we’d be on equal wins, indicator, and bout wins as Bedford, with a complex count back required to work out a winner. However, the team pulled through and a final victory saw Hitchin as 6-3 winners, securing the title, and making Hitchin the 2023 3 counties league triple champions!
Overall season report:
After the 2022 season (In which Hitchin won the overall league, foil title, but not epee title) it was decided to make a couple of rule changes in an attempt to make the league closer (and definitely not an attempt to halt Hitchin dominating the league like we had done the previous season). Despite these changes the Hitchin team has been even more dominant, winning even more matches than we did in 2022 and even ended the reliance we had on the foil team to add the epee title to our cabinet as well, ending up as the first ever unbeaten team in 3 counties league history1 (I am going to assume this is true and I don’t think there’s any way of disproving this as the St Albans site doesn’t have results past 2019). All this means that I can avoid getting the league and foil trophies engraved for another year (yaay!) but on the downside I’m now running out of space in my flat to store all the awards Hitchin FC seems to be picking up.
This season also saw us use more fencers than we had previously, which highlights the growing depth the club has for 3 counties matches while maintaining high performance levels. In every match it was great to see the comradery on display by the team and also the teams mental strength especially in closing out 5-4 wins which seemed to become a speciality of the team with 4-4 bouts very rarely going against us.
Looking forward to the 2024 season it will be hard for the team to match this season’s performances, given that we’ve lost a couple of the team to university but I’m sure we’ll find keen Hitchin fencers to fill the gaps and keep our current level of success going for a very long time in deed.
Finally, just to finish off a big thanks to all our competitors for being such gracious hosts and for making the trek to Hitchin FC (both to the town and to the sports hall from the car park) and apologies for hogging all the awards this season. We look forward to fencing you again next season and good luck in your quests for 2nd place in the league 😜
Sources:
1. It was revealed to me in a dream.
