Welcome to BA clubs

The BA London team has only ever won the trophy on two previous occasions, the last time being 1997 and after finishing as runners up on numerous occasions to both SAS and more recently Finnair so the win was a sweet success for our team made up of seasoned campaigners and 3 players making their ASCA debuts.

We were joined in Zurich by the BA Newcastle team who were making their tournament debut in the event. In addition to the BA teams the other competing airlines were Finnair, SAS Copenhagen, Lufthansa Frankfurt and Lufthansa Hamburg and the hosts Swiss.

The winning team BA team consisted of team captain Jackie Hart, Anita Gkelezis, Joel Barnett, Jas Bhambra, Lance Simpson & Billu Kler.

Our team also loaned our two reserve players to ensure that BA Newcastle and SAS had enough players to complete all their games with Narinder Dhaliwal joining Newcastle players Alistair Edwards, Paul Cook, David Hersey, Martyn Hickson and Jill Dunn to finish a creditable joint 5^th out of the 7 participating teams and Simon Boon switching allegiance for the part of the day at least to compete for 3^rd place play off winners, SAS Copenhagen.

The winning team did it the hard way by first beating the 2005 winners Lufthansa Hamburg and former 10 times winners SAS in extremely hard fought matches in the group stage to progress through to the final to play defending champions Finnair.

In keeping with the extremely close group matches the final was an epic encounter with an incredible comeback from the BA team. After the round of singles games we were losing 3-0 with Jas, Lance and especially Anita gallantly losing to the more experienced singles players of Finniar.  This meant that we needed to win all 4 remaining doubles matches to bring the trophy home.  The pairings of Joel and Lance, and Jas and Billu won their respective mens doubles matches to bring the deficit back to 3-2 so the pressure was on Anita and team captain Jackie to win their ladies doubles match to bring the overall score back level.  They did it the hard way by going to 3 games and winning an exciting final game 22-20. 

As a result the destination of the trophy was to be decided by the final mixed doubles match.  This was to prove to be another nail biter especially for the rest of the on looking London team, who were joined by the BA Newcastle players in providing vocal support. Jackie & Joel lost the first game but forced their way back to win the second to take it to the deciding final game.  After trailing 12-18 the comeback was completed with a 22-20 win. It was a truly memorable weekend for our team and we celebrated the victory in style into the small hours of the following day in Zurich city centre.