Gold
Neal played an important role in securing Team Gold for the Irish team at the Primary Schools Home International. He won 13 out of 14 to help the team to victory
In the penultimate match against Guernsey we took the initiative right away with Neal,s superb five set win against Oliver Langlois the Guernsey number one. Down 0-5 and 4-8 in the fifth, he strung together a fantastic series of fierce forehand topspin winners to win 11-9. This unsettled the Guernsey team whose challenge melted away and we ran out 8-2 winners.
In the final match against England both Neal and Sam Hanley once again rose to the occasion to give us the ideal 2-0 lead . Neal won his doubles with Ashley Robinson to give us 4-2 and then the Irish boys turned the screw winning the final four singles to win 8-2.The other members of the team Sam Logue, Ashley Robinson and Sam Hanley were superb and contributed to a memborable occasion for all.
Sam Hanley took the singels
title the following day beating Neal in the final
Silver
Mark had a superb end to the season including a fine run to the final of the Bangor Open juniors event. There he lost to Keith Knox but on the way he overcame Sam Hanley and Daniel Keenan both 3-0. In the top eight Mark was unlucky not to win his first ranking tournament of the season when he beat Daniel in a superb game 3-1. Earlier however he had dropped one match deuce in the fifth to David Budden and he lost on a countback by the narrowest of margins.
Bronze
It was the bronze medal for Gavin Maguire in the Cadet Boys event at the Schools International. Only 4 of the 24 individual medallists were not English and Gavin was one of these. He finished runner up in his group to Wing Yung Chan. He won 3-0 in the other two games in his group. In the last 16 Gavin exacted revenge on Ben Avery of Wales for a defeat the previous day in the team match. He won 11-8 11-2 11-13 11-9 to secure a place in the quarter finals.
In the quarter finals he faced Chris Doran from England. Having lost the first 11-9 Gavin played at a consistently high level to take the next two games 11-3 11-9. Down 10-8 in the fourth he played bravely to level at 10-10 before winning that game 13-11 to take the match and progress to the semi finals. He faced Damien Nicholls there and lost 11-2 11-8 11-5. This was a disappointing end to an excellent run in the tournament.