Six U19 players travelled to Dorchester Squash Club to take on Dorset & Devon in the first round of the Inter County Championships.

Hampshire versus Dorset. As the local players were unknown to our team it was difficult to anticipate how things would go. The first two games put in Simon Retter (Winchester) at 5th string and Henry Birch (Guernsey) 4th string. Simon dominated strongly throughout winning 27-4 against Lee Biles, and Henry ruthlessly didn't allow Luke James a point. With this excellent start next up were Alex Phillips (Westridge IOW) 1st string & Callum Arnott also (Westridge) IOW 3rd string against Darren Long & Jermain Xaber respectively. Alex narrowly lost his first game 8-10, but recovered to win 3-1. Callum did the same but at 1-8 down in the fourth the match seemed finely balanced. At this stage the marker realised the Dorset player had no eye protection. After some discusson Jermain returned to court wearing goggles, the distraction seemed to allow Callum back in the game and he steadily clawed back the points finally winning 10-9. Chris Rand (Lee on Solent) 2nd string took on James Ryan, after a challenging start from his opponent Chris confidently progressed to a 3-0 victory. Hampshire coming out 20-2 winners against their hosts Dorset.

Hampshire versus Devon. The arrival during the first match of the Devon team confirmed Hampshire expectations. Devon were fielding 3 nationally ranked players now studying at Millfields' Jonah Barrington Squash Academy, well known to Hants juniors. Simon took on Ben Rodgers. Ben took the first 9-5, Simon determindly took the second 10-8, narrowly lost the 3rd 7-9, and swamped his opponent 9-2 in the 4th. Simon finally ran out of steam in the 5th going down 2-3. Henry surged to a dominating 9-1 lead. lost focus in the second losing 1-9, came back in a close fought third 9-6, lost the edge again in the 4th, went match point down in the fifth from match point up then undisputedly won the final rally to achieve 100% successful match statistics. Callum fell 2-9 down to Mike Harris, resurged to win 9-8, but despite burning energy levels he could never challenge so seriously again going down 3-9, 6-9. Chris took on Jim Bristow losing 6-9, then 0-9 before aggressively focussing all his energies brilliantly taking the third 9-2. This left the tank rather empty for the fourth with Chris losing out 6-9. Alex faced James Snell. The first game set the pattern for the match. Rallies were long but seldom in Alex's favour. At 0-2 down his resort to seeking early winners and slowing the game only earned the same challenge points against his more consistent opponent, result 27-13. The match score being 7-19 in Devon's favour. Stefan Stanton (Hart) 6th string meanwhile played the longest match of the day against Dorset no.6. The match swung either way and was very competitively fought with various discusions about the rules and the merits of being obliged to wear goggles. Despite the game contributing no points to the overall match, spectators were drawn partisanly to the long entertaining rallies. Frustratingly for Stefan he finally lost a close 5th match, &the game 2-3, however certainly not without honour.

With Devon beating Dorset 20-2 the final results placed them on 39 points, Hants / IOW / Guernsey 27 & Dorset 4. Devon through to the semi final stages at the end of January.