Wilmslow Lacrosse Club hosted the 13th British National Championships last weekend where 12 men’s teams from all over the UK battled for the prestigious National Championship title and the Nick Kehoe Trophy.
This year’s tournament had the biggest entry ever with some 320 players and the debut of England Masters (over 35 years) and England Grand Masters (over 45 years) as well as usual contenders Scotland, Wales, Cheshire, Lancashire, Yorkshire, South of England and English Universities North and South.
This year all the squads were using the tournament as an integral part of their preparation for the World Championships taking place at the University of Manchester’s sports facility in Fallowfield in July.
The conditions were perfect on Saturday for the sport, which is often described as the 'fastest game on two legs', and a series of round robin preliminary games saw some fierce competition as only the top 6 teams could win entry into the Championship with the other 6 teams competing for the BNC Plate.
Cheshire have dominated the competition recently, having won the Championship 6 times in the past 12 years and have been runner up on most other occasions, but a cold and chilly Sunday saw an upset when Cheshire were demolished 8-1 by a superb Wales performance.
The final between Wales and Lancashire was a rematch of their 4-4 draw in the preliminaries. Wales led for most of the game but Lancs never gave up and equalised with 3 minutes of play left, making overtime likely, but then a goal with 30 seconds on the clock and Wales a man down they were forced to press the ball and Lancs got a second goal just before the final whistle.
The British National Championships provided a superb weekend of highly entertaining lacrosse with 36 games played on a mixture of grass and artificial surfaces. Each team played 6 increasingly competitive games as the weekend proceeded, with some very close results on the Sunday.
Brian Kehoe presented the trophies to the winners and the runners up plus “Man of the Match” tankards, sponsored by UKLacrosse, to Glen Humphries (Lancashire) and Justin Klueger (South).
