St Paul’s School and Cambridge University Sports Centre
Saturday, 15th February 2025
Nick Whitney reports for Oxford: The 39th Edition of the Oxford Past vs Present match took place at St Paul’s School on Sunday, 15th February.
In the men’s match, the top 8 were evenly matched in singles with some close games across the order resulting in a 88-84 lead to the Past going into the doubles. This included a 16-15 epic between Louis Odgers (Past) and Seb Ion (Present), and a gruelling 15-13 battle between brothers Dan Whitham (Past) and Aiden Whitham (Present Captain) in which Dan came out on top. This took the Whitham brothers’ head to head results over the past few years to a 3-0 clean sweep to Dan, much to Aiden’s chagrin.
In the doubles, the Past’s top pair of Peter Hanton & Sam Roberts, reversed their singles losses to win both games against the Present’s top pairing of Ander Iraizoz & Seb Ion. The second Present pair of Julian Hanton & Aiden Whitham were able to beat the first Past pair to win back some points in the second familial match up of the day. With a total of four Hantons in the fixture (3 Past, 1 Present), there were plenty of family rivalries being played out on court all day.
The depth of the Past came to the fore in the doubles, and despite a handful of very close games decided by 1 or 2 points including several for the Present’s 3rd pair of Aaditya Deshmukh & Michael Hawkey, the Past extended their lead to win the Mackenzie Bowl with a score of 217-176
In the women’s match the teams were competing for a newly minted trophy named the Warner Tower in honour of Dick Warner – the Club’s Senior Member and stalwart of the PvP fixture. The result was decided solely by the singles contest, as the Past and Present sides mixed together in the doubles for an Owers Tournament style competition. Phoebe Thornhill’s Past side edged an overall win, with some close scores across the order including a tense 15-12 battle between the Past’s Viola King Forbes and Present captain Abbie Evans, with Abbie coming out on top.
The day was rounded out by the Beavers’ fixture (Past securing a comfortable win), some enjoyable exhibition games, and the traditional dinner at Queen’s Club where the Past wished the Present good luck ahead of this weekend’s Varsity Match.
Bob Dolby reports for Cambridge: The 76th Past v Present consisted of a Match played on the new courts at the University Sports Centre and the Jock Burnet Dinner at Pembroke College.
Ian Jackson took charge this year of organising the three contests played out over the day, and did so with his customary magisterial but compassionate touch. In the 8-a-side PvP the Past got off to a good start, winning 5 of the Singles matches. Stand-out contests were Charlie Brooks’s 15-12 win over Marcus Cloke Browne, matched by freshman Leo Walton’s 15-7 win over the Past’s George Crawley. The needle contests beween Sarthak Garella and Emrys Thursfield (OMTs) and Ashwin Ahuja and Ben Yass (Old Paulines) both went the Present’s way.
The first round of Doubles produced three close contests, but the greater experience and guile of Andy Pringle & Ian Jackson told in the 4th match, and enabled the Past to open up a substantial lead at the turn.
Ian introduced the mighty left hand of James Birch for the final doubles, which didn’t stop Marcus Cloke Browne & Ben Yass winning a morale-boosting couple of games. This helped considerably in reducing the margin of the Past’s overall victory to 250-183.
Meanwhile on Court 2 what can be loosely termed to be a Mixed Doubles tournament was held for the Ted Isaacs Trophy. Here we saw a welcome return to the fixture by Rustom Irani and a first ever appearance by Sean Egan, plus a more familiar sight in Jon Abecassis and Rupert Mathieu, these four triumphantly representing the non-playing-Gareth-Quarry team, while Ian Steed & Helena Tunks plus Stuart Kirby & Richard Kemp honoured the spirit of the match’s name.
In the Women’s match the gulf in experience between the Past players – Holly Nugent, Savanna Leboff, Cassi Henderson, Harriet Fearon, Cat Bar and Cameron Roker – and Catherine Abercrombie’s new squad meant that it made better sense to equalise things by creating two matching teams. Hence a contest was set up in which the Past and Present were mixed up and Cat Bar’s VI eventually beat Cameron Roker’s VI, the present squad gaining valuable experience in the context of a full match of Singles and Doubles.
60 people attended the Dinner. After the predictably delicious meal “a few words” were spoken, firstly by the new President, Gareth Quarry, who spoke with great generosity of his predecessor’s 35 years of involvement in running the fixture, asking Ian Jackson to present Bob with an impressive original Fives-themed artwork (see below) to complement a trophy awarded him last year.
Marcus Cloke Browne, in his second year of captaincy, spoke with typical modesty of the Club’s progress and achievements over the past 12 months and looked forward to a rewarding contest in a week’s time. The Women’s Captain, Catherine Abercrombie, also spoke with great warmth of her pride in what Cambridge Women’s Fives was achieving over the course of the past 10 years.
Bob Dolby then paid tribute to Tony Lemons, former Head of the CU Physical Education Department, who had died last year. Without Tony’s constant support our Club would not have had the chance to raise the necessary money to build courts after 17 years in the wilderness. Bob then recounted the achievements of our players past and present over the last year, adding 22 titles to the list published on www.cu-sparrows.net, 536 of them since 1925.
Finally Ian Jackson awarded the Trapnell Tankard to Charlie Brooks, the Ted Isaacs Trophy to Sean Egan and the Bob Dolby Trophy to Cat Bar. Whereupon a very large number of photographs were taken!
Photographs below with thanks to Andy Pringle, Angus Hanton, Nick Whitney and Alistair Higgins.
Singles action from the Oxford Men’s Match at St Paul’s
Dark Blue Ladies’ Doubles action
Angus one of several Hantons in action
The President Dickie W. enjoying himself
Sam Roberts an ever-present
The RFA General Secretary and the Present, …..
….. while at Cambridge, Match Manager Ian Jackson as calm as ever
Mostly the Present
James Birch in action on the glass-back Cambridge courts
One Present and three Past
Charlie with the Trapnell Tankard
Cat with the new Women’s Match trophy
President Gareth and Women’s Captain Catherine
Executioners Helena, Richard and Andy
The former President and some of the Present
A memento for Bob D.