Auckland Stand Proudly Behind Championship Shields Again

The second and final day of the NZ Senior Championship team events drew to a close with three matches to complete for the day, a final group match and then two crossovers for semi final and final placing matches. There were some very exciting games between very skillfull players. We got our much anticipated matchup of Brad Chen vs. Tony Liu which went 3-2 in the latter's favour (full highlights will be available soon), also the nailbiting 5 set matches between Malcolm Darroch with both James Harter and Peter Craven of Waikato, the home sides Matthew Ball unhinging Auckland's Josh Alexandre and then pushing Phillip Xiao to the 5th set and Jessica Macaskill leading out a 2-0 lead on Auckland's Feng Jie before she fell victim to a 3 set catchup. A superb day of matches but of course it was Auckland who retained the men's and women's A Grade team shields, a joyous day for Josh Alexandre who got to hold the shield yet another time.

Winners of the Mens A Grade - Auckland - 
Josh Alexandre, Phillip Xiao, Tony Liu, Zhiyang Cheng, Julian Wootton

runners up Canterbury - Malcolm Darroch, Simon Wallace, Yi-Sien Lin

Winners of the Womens A Grade - Auckland -
Fan (Vicky) Yang, Feng Jie, Jennifer Tseng

runners up Wellington - Catherine Zhou, Sabine Westenra, Lisa Yue


Winners of the Mens B Grade - Manawatu (2) -
Charly Talumepa, Miko Kirschbaum, Stew Hickford, Dean Lochhead

runners up Wellington (2) - Bryan McConnochie, Phillip McConnochie, Depak Patel, Paul Solt

Winners of the Mens C Grade - Otago -
Andrew Marr, Luke Johnstone, Ricky Kim

runners up Hawkes Bay - Alan Keighley, Matt Brider, Hayden Wong

Congratulations to everyone.

Below are some highlights and photos from the 2 days of team competition, video footage was all done by me, photos were done by Jason Poon. Had some issues with video but fixed, still some minor pixelations but hope you enjoy!