Marlborough College
Sunday, 1st March 2026
With the RFA’s thanks to organiser Giles Munn, to the various coaches and staff who brought their squads, and to our kind hosts, Marlborough College.
Giles Munn reports: In this year’s Colquhoun Trophy tournament, despite some last minute drop-outs, we had a total of 25 players from 6 different schools: Marlborough, Sherborne, Radley, Malvern, Peter Symonds and Winchester, with a total of 84 games played.
The U18 competition was very hard to call, so groups were set up leading to a knock-out competition and a plate. The group stages went as expected with the main contenders making it through, the one upset being T.Fergusson (WinC) beating T.Moesel (Sher) 11-10 to top their group. The knock-out stages proved how difficult it was to call between the top 8 players. J.Graham (Sher), who had come 3rd in his group, beat D.Vorobev (WinC), who had topped his group, and then proceeded to beat his teammate Moesel to reach the final. In the final Graham was to meet N.Wong (WinC), to whom he had lost 9-0 in the group stages. This time Graham showed superior fitness and athletic ability to beat a tiring Wong 11-5, 11-3.
W.Horton (Sher) won the U18 plate competition, beating off his closest rival H.Koma (Rad) 11-5.
The U16 competition was much easier to seed and the top 4 did not disappoint, all making the semi-finals. It was not entirely without incident as H.Hill (Malv) looked like he might be in trouble in his 1st game against W.Lee (WinC); however he found his rhythm and eventually progressed 1-11, 11-2, 11-3. The semi-finals were of a very good standard and despite both only going to 2 sets the second sets were close games, both won 12-10. In the final H.Franks (WinC) fought hard against the home favourite and 1st seed H.Fletcher (Marl) but was unable to make enough progress against some excellent serving and precision hitting from the left-handed Fletcher, who won 11-1, 11-5.
The U16 plate competition was won for the 2nd year in a row by Winchester’s Lee, heading his closest rival R.Xie (Marl), who went one better than his 3rd place from last year. In the rest of the U16 plate it was great to see that everyone won at least 1 game.
Results
U18 Singles: J.Graham (Sherborne School) bt N.Wong (Winchester College) 11-5, 11-3
U18 Singles Plate: W.Horton (Sherborne School) bt H.Koma (Radley College) 11-5
U16 Singles: H.Fletcher (Marlborough College) bt H.Franks (Winchester College) 11-1, 11-5
U16 Singles Plate: 1st W.Lee (Winchester College); 2nd R.Xie (Marlborough College)
U18 Cup and Plate winners from Sherborne
U16 Singles champion from Marlborough
The players