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James Tompkinson reviews an excellent pre-season victory for the York City Knights against Yorkshire rivals Leeds Rhinos
York Men’s 1sts 127- 100 Newcastle Men’s 2nds
After a promising performance against Durham in the quarterfinals, the York men’s first team went further north with high hopes for a place in the final. However, they had reason to feel apprehensive. York was only able to field four fencers; Newcastle on the other hand supplied eight.
The York captain, Harry Whitwell, won the toss to decide the order in which the weapons would be fenced. Allegedly epee was Newcastle’s strongest weapon so the decision was taken to fence the epee first to give York’s superior foil the last, deciding match.
In fact, York’s epeeists did not have much to worry about; Skingle, Whitwell and Denniss all put in exceptional performances to get York off to a great start. Winning every individual bout, the York epeeists dominated from the start and held onto their lead to win the epee 45-18, putting York a convincing 27 points in the lead. At no point did Newcastle look like making a comeback; the York epeeists demonstrated very good timing and distance, a product of the hard work they had put into training.
In the next weapon, the Sabre, York achieved an early lead of 10-6 with some very ‘shouty’ fencing from Whitwell and Jones. Despite strong performances from Denniss and Whitwell, Newcastle pulled back to lead narrowly 25-24 by the end of the fifth bout. In the sixth bout Jones put York back in the lead 30-28, but unfortunately for York in the last three bouts the Newcastle sabreurs were able to win the Sabre 45-37.
Despite this setback, York was still in a strong position going into the final weapon, the foil. York only needed 27 points to win the match. However the York foilists had much higher expectations; Skingle, Whitwell and Jones all fought strong first bouts to put York in a commanding position at the beginning of the match. Unfortunately for York the Newcastle anchor fenced exceptionally well against Jones, putting Newcastle in the lead 25-22 at the end of the fifth bout. Harry Whitwell with his trademark stylish fencing recovered York’s lead to 30-28, sealing York’s place in the final in the process. York’s foilists were not going to give up and let Newcastle take the foil as a consolation however. Jones managed to hold onto York’s lead, taking the score to 35-34 to York. Tom Skingle saved many York nails from being bitten, fencing very well to defeat his last opponent 5-0, to put York 40-34 up going into the last bout of the match. In a highly entertaining match between Whitwell and the Newcastle anchor, in which both fencers were well matched, Whitwell managed to win 5-3. This secured a win in the foil for York 45-37.
Captain Whitwell summed up the win: “Despite being heavily outnumbered, our small team pulled together to give them a thumping”.
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