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No Problem For Noah At The Graves Cup

09/01/25: This year's Ipswich Tournament for the Graves Cup was won by Noah Urmston & Gareth Hoskins in all OI final against Simon Cass & Tim Wyndham at the weekend.

The 2025 Graves Cup - in its traditional start of January slot - was vying this year with the "Gavin & Stacey" Christmas special for the title of biggest event of the festive period. A tale of relationships, both functional and dysfunctional, with a cast of characters known for their hilarious repartee, strange personality quirks and frequent bouts of heavy drinking, the Graves Cup has been going since 1979 and unlike its televisual counterpart is showing no signs of reaching a conclusion just yet.

This year's cast and crew numbered 17 pairs, and with Tony Stubbs - the Ipswich Fives version of Uncle Bryn - opening the pavilion early on Saturday and getting the coffee on (just don't mention the infamous minibus trip, though), the stage was set for 17 pairs of school pupils, staff, OIs and guests to get the 2025 edition of the Graves Cup underway. The four Saturday groups produced four winners who were delighted to be able to put their feet up and prepare for the dinner while the eight second and third placed pairs played off for the final four Sunday morning knockout spots. There were plenty of close games all day, with giant of the game Seb Cooley predictably starting with a 15-14 win in the company of Anastasia Moore and Stubbsy working overtime to ensure that he & Sam Allen ended up in a Plate competition with two 11-12 defeats. 2024 winner Isaac Weaver was back again looking for two in a row, winning all of his group games with Ethan Siow, while OI pairings Gareth Hoskins & Noah Urmston and Simon Cass & Will Kelly also went through the day unbeaten.

The Graves Cup wouldn't be the Graves Cup without a few overnight "adjustments" to the draw and this year's involved the Sunday morning withdrawal of Will Kelly, who was replaced by Tim Wyndham, freed from the responsibilities of nursing the venerable Boughton through a second day and promoted to the knockout stages alongside Simon Cass. The Plate slightly ran out of both time and steam on Sunday, although some excellent matches were played on the way. Order was restored at the end of the day, with Anastasia deciding she'd had enough of playing with Seb and instead opting for the comforting familiarity of partnering Stubbsy in a Plate final, although they did then rather come a cropper against Betsy Laws & Karen Hird. The Plate A finalists were decided partly by the group results and partly by who hadn't yet gone home, Peter Forrest & Will Carron triumphing over Peter Boughton & Ethan Siow, who in true Graves Cup style both finished the weekend with a different partner to the one they started with, Ethan answering a late call up to even up the numbers having not originally been down to play on the Sunday, his place in the main draw instead taken by Isabella Wyndham (keep up at the back....).

The main tournament quarter-finals - on increasingly wet and slippery courts - saw the demise of the tournament's two big beasts, Seb & Anastasia losing to James Gray & Matt Williams and Weaver's hopes of two in a row dashed by Will Woods & Eloise Carter. The two other unbeaten pairs from Saturday continued to progress, with Gareth & Noah winning a tight 15-12 game against Harvey Garrard & tournament debutant Ed Habershon and Simon & new partner Tim quickly gelling to see off Charlotta Cooley & Matt Johnson. With Noah growing in confidence and increasingly taking the lead role, he & Gareth slipped and skidded their way past Will & Eloise in one semi-final, while Simon & Tim produced possibly the performance of the weekend in the other, overturning a 12-5 first game loss to James & Matt to take the next two 15-12 and 12-8. This meant a rare all OI final; it quickly became clear, however, that their semi-final heroics had taken quite a lot out of Simon & Tim and also that their opponents were coping more effectively with the wet court. The conditions meant that the final was never going to be a classic, and with Gareth controlling the set piece and the left-handed Noah finding an excellent balance between attack and defence, they won fairly comfortably, Noah winning his first title and Gareth his third, in his 38th consecutive year of playing the tournament.

 

The Peter Boughton view

Something must be wrong, as the Graves Cup Seeding Committee had finished its deliberations - concocting pairs to vie for the coveted (now huge) trophy for the Ipswich Fives Tournament - yet it was only 9:30pm the night before the event. Surely it couldn’t be that simple. Cooleys Seb and Charlotta and Peter Boughton had devised pairs as evenly as possible from the list of entrants, making it almost impossible to seed them with any certainty. Everything had to be taken into account. Gareth Hoskins had confided that his back was bad. Oh, and he had broken his thumb and not played for eight weeks, and he wasn’t sure how either would stand up. He suggested it would be better if he was given a partner who wouldn’t mind too much if he had to pull out. This was balanced against his lack of alcohol intake, which would mean no "Seb Sunday" for him following the Saturday night dinner. Forty-four hours later, Gareth and partner, Noah Urmston, were being congratulated on winning the 45th Ipswich Tournament. Asked about this historic victory over his bodily ailments as well as the opposition, Gareth responded, “Well, Noah played fantastically, so I didn’t have to do much.” And to be fair, Noah had indeed performed well above expectations.

There was also the shock of coming out of the pavilion at 2.15am on the Sunday to find heavy snow falling on unsalted ground, Caudle x 2, Cooley x 2 and Harriet Asquith thereby having to break their journey back to the boarding house via a stop chez JAC to taste his bottle of Taylor's 1977 port. The weather gods may have thought they were then being kind, raising the temperature ten degrees overnight from Saturday to Sunday, but Stubbsy’s declaration that the courts were a bit damp at the back but okay appeared Panglossian, as players slithered around wet floors and coped as best they could with the streaming walls. One or two observers also noted that the difficulty all players had moving around the court on Sunday may have aided one of the eventual winning pair by levelling that particular playing field somewhat.

 

Play-Off Round

H.Garrard & E.Habershon beat E.Caldwell & A.Blunden 15-8

W.Woods & E.Carter beat A.Phillips & N.Mason 15-7

C.Cooley & M.Johnson beat P.Boughton & T.Wyndham 15-10

J.Gray & M.Williams beat P.Forrest & W.Carron 15-11

 

Quarter-Finals

J.Gray & M.Williams beat S.Cooley & A.Moore 15-10

S.Cass & T.Wyndham beat C.Cooley & M.Johnson 15-10

G.Hoskins & N.Urmston beat H.Garrard & E.Habershon 15-12

W.Woods & E.Carter beat I.Weaver & I.Wyndham 15-7

 

Semi-Finals

S.Cass & T.Wyndham beat J.Gray & M.Williams 2-1 (5-12, 15-12, 12-8)

G.Hoskins & N.Urmston beat W.Woods & E.Carter 2-0 (12-9, 12-9)

 

Final

G.Hoskins & N.Urmston beat S.Cass & T.Wyndham 2-0 (12-4, 12-4)

 

Plate

Group A

1. H.Asquith & S.Cook

2. T.Stubbs & S.Allen

3. K.Hird & B.Laws

 

Group B

1. P.Boughton & E.Siow

2. E.Caldwell & A.Blunden

3. J.Hughes & L.Rymell

 

Group C

1. P.Forrest & W.Carron

2. H.Gardner & A.Butler

3. A.Phillips & N.Mason

 

Plate A Final

P.Forrest & W.Carron beat P.Boughton & E.Siow 8-1

 

Plate B Final

K.Hird & B.Laws beat T.Stubbs & A.Moore 12-3

 

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