Foil Fencing in Ireland

Well this was definitely a fun one- got to see and partake in a couple nail-biters. There were 7 teams for MF, which was incidentally the same amount as for the Varsities, but the atmosphere was much more relaxed (fewer college fencers, Italian Relay, etc). There was one round of poules, one of three teams and one of four. I’ll try to get across what I can remember chronologically, but I can’t make too many promises of total recall, I’m sorry if I leave anything out!

UCD’s team was myself, Keith Halloran, and Duncan Wallace. We were in the poule of 3. The other two teams were Salle Cyrano (Ruari, John, and Jer), and Pembroke (Duncan, Michael, and Paddy). Our first match was against Salle Cyrano. Although we jumped out to a comfortable initial lead (10-3 and then 20-10), Cyrano refused to go away, with John O Sullivan bringing it back in an 11-3 match against Duncan to make the score 23-21 in UCD’s favour at one point. It had been a relatively messy bout up to that points, with more point coming as the result of mistakes as opposed to the correct implementation of planning and technique. Fortunately for our team though, UCD pulled away again at that point, with each fencer in the remaining bouts getting 5 touches or more each to finish on top 45-35. Our next bout was immediately afterwards, against Pembroke. While it was was close at one point (19-17 after a 9-4 effort by Duncan Salter in the 4th bout), Pembroke didn’t gain much ground at all from there, with the final score being 45-27. The final bout in our poule was Cyrano vs Pembroke. Cyrano had the edge throughout most of the bout, but Pembroke kept it very tight throughout. Cyrano ultimately pulled through though, winning 44-43 if memory serves.

The teams in the other poule were UCC, NUIG, UL, and TCD. Although this bout finished 45-39 in NUIG’s favour, it saw some very impressive performances from Cian Blaix (NUIG) and Rory Hayes (UCC) along the way. After initially going 5-0 down, Blaix pulled it back in NUIGs favour in the 2nd period with a 10-2 performance. However, this work was largely undone three bouts later in the 5th when Hayes turned in a 12-3 performance to give the lead back to UCC at 25-23. UCC couldn’t hold onto this lead though, with the score 40-34 to NUIG going into the final period, with Blaix and Hayes going 5-5 to close out the bout in NUIGs favour.

Trinity were more successful against NUIG than UCC, beating them 45-34. Although this match saw 7-1 and 14-2 performances by Blaix in the 2nd and 6th bouts respectively, it wasn’t enough to swing the bout in NUIGs direction. Trinity’s 3rd and 2nd fencers Ian Kenny and Conor Traynor, performed very well in the 7th and 8 bouts, going a combined 13-1 to give TCD a 40-31 lead which Li Dong was able to finish off without too much difficulty.

Trinity’s dominance of the poule continued in their match against UCC. With Li Dong on piste first, TCD jumped out to a 5-1 lead, which they held on to until the 6th bout. TCD had been winning 25-16, but UCC’s Hayes put in a 14-3 performance against TCDs Traynor to make the score 30-28 to UCC. However, they couldn’t hold onto this lead, with Trinity continuing to be solid in the final three bouts, winning the match overall at 45-38.

I have to confess that I didn’t see anything else from the the other poule, but I do know that UL beat UCC 45-37, and that somewhere in there was a 10-1 performance from Pierre Bahain, a strong epeeist who apparently knows how to fence foil as well. I’ll move onto what I remember from the DEs anyway.

UCD had a bye for the last 8, besides that everyone was paired up. UL and Pembroke fought a very tight match, of which I reffed the first half. UL’s Mark Rankin turned in some very impressive performances, which, coupled with solid fencing on behalf of Pierre, saw UL have the edge up until the point I left. I came back in time for the final bout, which was Duncan Salter against Pierre Bahain. While the two fencers seemed relatively evenly matched, Salter appeared to be having equipment issues, which may have led to some crucial missed ripostes, allowing UL to win out.

The L8 also saw a rematch of TCD and UCC. While Hayes and Dong again traded impressive 5-1 and 10- performances in the first and second periods respectively, TCD largely controlled this bout, sustaining the lead from the 2nd period onwards, with the final score of 45-28 much less close than their previous poule match. Elsewhere NUIG and Salle Cyrano fenced, but I didn’t see any of that bout. Cyrano won out though, churning out another solid team performance.

This set up L4 rematches between UCD and Salle Cyrano, and TCD and UL.

UCD jumped out to an early lead in the first bout against Cyrano, which saw myself fencing Ruari Mac Unfraidh. I alternated between fencing on the left and right sides of the piste, which appeared to fluster Ruari as he couldnt adapt between points, giving UCD a 5-1 lead. However, Cyrano pulled it right back, with John O Sullivan turning in an impressive 9-3 performance against Duncan Wallace, making the score 10-8 to Cyrano. Wallace seemed to have issues abandoning an action once he had committed to it, and also following parries up with ripostes. Keith pulled it back against Jer though, landing some fantastic attacks, and going 7-1 to give UCD back a 15-11 lead. Cyrano refused to quit though, with Ruari almost pulling the score back to even in the following period against Wallace, who continued to have issues with committing to the wrong action, leaving the score 20-19 in UCDs favour. Fortunately, I was against Cyrano’s 3rd (Jer) in the next bout, and won it 5-0, which was a massive momentum shift in the bout, and Cyrano couldn’t bring it back afterwards. UCD went on a 20-14 run in the next four bouts which saw them into the final with the end score being 45-33.

The other semifinal rematch between TCD and UL was much more incremental in nature, with no massive swings in points or momentum after the 2nd and 3rd, which Pierre won against Ian Kenny 7-1, and Conor won against Eoin 9-1 respectively. Trinity gradually pulled away 20-12 and 25-13, and late 10-5 and 7-5 efforts by Pierre and were not enough to sway the outcome, with Li Dong beating Pierre 5-3 in the final period, giving Trinity a 45-37 win.

Although only 3 of the 6 fencers were on the respective Intervaristy teams of UCD and TCD from two months prior, it was still fun to have a rematch, and the excited mood in the hall reflected it. The first bout was myself vs Conor Traynor. This started very sloppily for me, as I got red carded for turning my back twice as my weapon failed. I was able to pull it back though, making the score 5-2 when I got off. However, things got rough from there for UCD. Li Dong came on in the 2nd bout and scored 8 unanswered points against Duncan, who seemed unable to stop Li’s attacks. Keith didn’t fare much better against Ian Kenny, as he seemed completely stumped by the lefty and was unable to land his attacks, leaving the score 15-6 to Trinity when the period ended. Duncan managed to get some of his attacks off the ground finally in the 4th bout against Conor, but an aggregate score of 4-5 left Trinity with a significant 20-10 lead. I was on next against Ian. Although I managed to get a few hits back UCD’s way, I definitely pushed too hard attacking, trying to force quick compound actions as opposed to taking my time and netting lower risk hits, so the score was 18-25 when that period finished. Keith also didn’t have much success chasing points in the next bout, as Li pushed Trinity’s lead further ahead to 21-30. At this point, given our lack of success attacking Trinity, I thought that it was time for a change of tactics. I thought that if Trinity’s lead remained constant at about 10 points, I wouldn’t be able to get 15 points on Li in the final period before he got 5 on me. As such, the UCD team agreed to try and force passivity in Duncan and Keith’s next matches, giving me a much more achievable hits ratio against Li (24:15) than (15:5).

Our plan got off to a great start, as Duncan got one hit on Ian, who seemed very confused as to why UCD had stopped attacking while down by 10 points. At that point, passivity was called, so Duncan and Ian left the piste with the score at 22-30. Trinity suddenly looked very worried, as UCD suddenly had more cushion to get hits back. The next bout was Keith against Conor. I don’t know if this was a deliberate strategy on TCD’s behalf, but Conor was very aggressive in his match against Keith. Maybe they also figured that Li’s chances of holding out to get 15 points on me before I got 25 weren’t great, so they told Conor to push Keith in the hopes of getting easier points. Maybe Conor is just a naturally attacking fencer. Either way, Conor kept pushing Keith to the far end of the piste in the match. However, Keith held up phenomenally well under the pressure, and delivered a clutch defensive performance for an eventual bout score of 12-4, equalizing the team scores at 34-34 with only one bout left to go. The final bout was myself against Li. I decided to start the bout slow, taking more time than usual to set up the initial couple hits, in order to heap more pressure on Li to perform well under time pressure. This seemed to work, as I had a 36-34 lead with one minute elapsed. At this point, Li started to panic a little bit and push harder. Although he was able to force a couple attacks through, I was able to pick him off in attacks on prep and parry/disengage ripostes more often than not, and the final score was a much-more-comfortable-than-it-sounds 45-38, making UCD national team champions in mens foil.

Weird how the fencing season here pretty much stops flat, as opposed to gradually winding down… Apart from the Nationals in April, Student 5 nations in June, and the Quad, I can’t think of any more competitions which large numbers of people will go to, which is a little bit of a welcome shock to the system after fencing almost every weekend since mid-January. Personally, I’m planning to take about a month off from training, before building it back up again for a month or so before the S5N… hopefully work out a few bad habits that way. Anyway… on to the Varsities…

The format was team round-robin, with no set schedule for the whole day, you only knew your opponent for the current round. As a result of this, I had difficulty following a lot of the action from other teams, so this will be a very UCD-centric post- I’m sure that none of you mind… =P.

The order of the teams that we fenced throughout the day was UL, UCC, QUB, NUIG, TCD, NUIM, and UU. UCD’s team consisted of Kevin Maher, Garrett Sykes, Mitch Carr, and myself. Before the tournament, we sat down and discussed the other teams, and whether we should consequently adapt our order. We decided that Trinity and UCC needed special attention, and that we would try to close out as many of the other teams 5-0 by getting myself and Kev as many early matches as possible.

Against UL, we altered our plan slightly to give all four fencers at least one match, just to see if everyone was physically 100%. Everyone came out a little flat against UL, which is understandably as it was the first match of the day, but we polished them off 5-0 without too much difficulty. Regardless, it was good to see UL expanding out into foil, as they are almost exclusively an all-epee club, and I hope they enter MF again next year, even with hosting the IV’s on their plate.

Our next match was UCC. Their team consisted of Michalis Kirmidlis, Rory Hayes, and Yushan Ouyang. This was a pretty strong team, as Michalis is a very capable foilist, and Rory and Yushan both have been showing a lot of promise as Novices, particularly Rory. The thing about teams with a slightly lopsided makeup like that is that they are largely dependent on momentum, so we thought that it would be important to win the first match, which we assumed would be against Michalis. We also noted that while Garrett hadn’t fenced Rory and Yushan, Mitch (who was normally sub on the day) had fenced both and beaten both in the Easts, so we decided to put him in over Garrett, and give myself the first match against Michalis.

I didn’t exactly do my team favors at the start, as I went down 2-0 pretty quickly by just not being active enough on the piste. I managed to get it together though, pushing it back to 3-3 (though I got lucky when Michalis missed an easy riposte). I then ground out the next point, gradually pushing Michalis to his back line before landing a one-two to make it 4-3. At this point Kev asked how much time was left, and with 3 seconds left, the match went to time without much difficulty.

From there our plan started to unravel somewhat. Mitch lost to Rory 5-0, which may have put him off slightly, resulting in him losing his next match to Yushan as well. Kev also beat Yushan, but lost to Michalis. Fortunately, I won both my matches against Rory and Yushan, leaving us with an overall match score of 4-3 in UCD’s favor. At this point I had subbed off Mitch to clear his head, meaning that the final match (if it came down to it) would be Garrett vs Michalis, a scenario which we didn’t have confidence in. As a result, the penultimate match, Rory vs Kev, gained a lot of importance. Kev went down 2-0 and 3-1 very quickly, giving me a few gray hairs on the side of the piste, but Kev shrugged each point off and said “no no, its fine!”. True to his word, he pulled it back onto even footing eventually, with time being called with the score at 4-4. Kev was awarded priority, and eventually prevailed about 30 seconds in with (if memory serves) a simple parry-riposte.

Our match against QUB was a very welcome breather after that. I was surprised not to see Clarke Little on the team, as he is enrolled in the university, but instead we faced what was largely a team of novices, and won out relatively easily at 5-0.

Our next match was against NUIG, during which I tried my absolute best to ruin UCD’s clean sheet. NUIG’s team had Cian Blaix on it, who was on the S5N team with myself and Kev last year, and he also has a very good record against Kev and Garrett. However, both Garrett and Kev managed to win their matches against him, and also pick up a win each over Novices. However, I fenced particularly badly in this match. I fenced only one bout, going down 2-0 initially, before bringing it back to 4-2, at which point I left it slip to 4-4 before finally getting the last point.

Next was UCD’s match against Trinity, whose team consisted of Ned, Declan, and Li. Going into the match, we knew that the matches against Ned and Declan would be difficult, as like us, they had both represented Ireland in the past, and we knew from personal experience that they are both phenomenal under pressure. As such, Li was the weaker link on the team, meaning that it would be imperative not to let a bout slip against him. We also assumed that Trinity would try to close out the bout early by putting Dec and Ned on as much as possible early on, putting Li on for the final match. As such, we decided to put myself on as anchor in case that situation arose, and otherwise just try to win out against Li and have myself and Kev each pick up another bout along the way.

The first match was Kev against Li, which Kev won relatively comfortably at 5-2. The next match was myself against Ned, Trinity’s captain. I grabbed the initiative early, going up 2-0 and 4-1. Most of the points largely came from simple parry-ripostes of Ned’s attacks, as he was overlunging and couldnt recover to a safe distance in time, although I think there may have also been a beat direct attack in there as well. However, Ned tightened things up at this point and pulled it back to 4-3, with a couple nice beat-coupes. However, Ned’s prep was getting larger at this point due to the larger action of the coupe, and I got the last point with a fleche into his prep.

Being up 2-0 at this point was a major momentum boost for us, as it propelled Garrett over Li in their match, with Garrett moving very well in absorbing Li’s attacks and then successfully changing direction and landing parry ripostes or direct attacks once Li’s actions had failed. Garrett also almost beat Declan as well, eventually losing 5-4 on priority. I also had a tough match against Declan. I came out slightly flat after my win over Ned, and very quickly found myself in a 4-1 hole, as I wasn’t moving enough, and Declan was managing to finish several nice compound attacks. I managed to slow down the pace of the bout at that point though, gradually pushing Declan to the end of the piste and picking up 2 points on a beat direct and a beat disengage on his back line. At this point, Declan changed tactic and pushed forward, but shut the distance too quickly and I won 5-4 very quickly with simple parry-ripostes. Kev managed to finish off the overall match for us. While he lost to Ned, he was able to push past Declan in the penultimate match and win relatively easily, securing the first win for UCD over Trinity in Mens Foil since 2007.

At that point, the intensity dropped very significantly, as the day was effectively decided with just two matches left to go. In a nice gesture, NUIM, essentially a team of novices, but with friendly connections to me and Kev going back a good while, approached us openly displaying their match order and saying who wanted to fence who, making the bout relatively cordial. After finishing that bout 5-0, we just had once match left against UU, at which point Garrett approached me and said that he didn’t want to fence anymore, so myself, Kev, and Mitch finished off the day by winning that match 5-0 as well.

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So, the Student Individuals….

The drop in intensity was also noticeable the next weekend in the Student Individuals, which was hosted by Maynooth. Many of the stalwarts of the Varsities (Ned, Dec, Michalis) didn’t enter, and the competition was largely dominated by novices, leading to a much more relaxed atmosphere. However, there was one poule of death, with Kevin Maher, Cian Blaix, and Rory Hayes all in a poule of 5. I was in a poule of 6. It went relatively uneventfully, with me winning two matches 5-0 and two matches 5-1, although I was stumped by one Trinity beginner, who I eventually beat 4-3. He moved well, and didn’t give up on fencing even after I had jumped out to a 3-0 lead. The next round of poules was similar, as I won two matches 5-0, and two matches 5-1. Kev had a similar run, although he went 5-4 a couple times along the way in his poules. This gave us the 1 and 2 seeds, and an opportunity to repeat our appearances in the final last year.

My first DE was against a Maynooth beginner, which finished very quickly 15-0. It was my first ever 15-0, and to be perfectly honest I felt a little bad about it, even though I wasn’t fencing flat out, I felt it would have been poor form to give away a couple easy hits. I hope I didn’t traumatize him and make him stop fencing or anything. Beyond this match, nothing really shocking happened in any of the matches, with all major seeds (Kev, Cian, Rory, Li) all progressing.

My second DE (L8) was against the aforementioned TCD beginner who had stumped me in the poules. After getting to a shaky 5-4 lead at the first break, I changed tactic and had all my ripostes arrive in the low line (be they direct or indirect), as opposed to high line which I had been doing previously, leading me to win comfortably at 15-5. Kev and Cian also won out, making the L4 almost identical to the previous year. Perhaps the most interesting bout of the L8 was Li Dong vs Rory Hayes. Rory played a tight, defensive game, keeping big distance and getting a lot of points on parry ripostes after Li’s attacks had failed. However, Li displayed a pretty impressive variety of attacks and was patient enough to look for the right openings, and managed to start clawing the match back. Rory was also able to change it up though, and threw in a couple direct attacks from his largely defensive stance, and eventually won out the very tight match 15-13.

The semis saw Kev fencing Rory, and myself fencing Cian. Kev beat Rory pretty handily. Although I didn’t see most of the match, I assume it was partly due to Kev moving well (which he was all day), Rory being exhausted from his tight match against Li, and Kev’s previous experience fencing infuriatingly defensive righties… =P

My match against Cian was much tighter, although I managed to hang onto the lead pretty much the whole way. Both me and Cian aren’t great attacking fencers, but my defense was a little bit more varied than Cian’s, as he started to overly rely on counterattacks in the match as opposed to parries, allowing me to set up several deliberate second intentions by parrying his counters, which proved the differerence (ALTHOUGH I DID GET AN AMAZING BEHIND THE BACK HIT!!).

This set the stage for a repeat of last year’s final with myself and Kev. As team mates and friends, there wasn’t much bad blood there, meaning that it was hard for both of us to focus for the entirety of the match, particularly after giving each other advice all day. I came out of the gates a little more focused than Kev, pulling out to an 8-3 lead before dropping down a gear, at which point Kev stepped it up and pulled it back to 8-8. At this point there was another reversal in momentum, with me gaining the next few points and building up a 13-9 lead. Kev managed to close the gap slightly to 14-12, but Kev missed a crucial riposte and I got the final hit to make it 15-12, making it a very successful couple weekends for UCD.

Hi all,

Apologies that it’s been a while since my last post, since I wasn’t able to make the NIO. I’ll jump right into what I saw/remember of the competition without preamble then.

It was a big entry for MF in the EOI, 45. For some reason it always seems to draw more of a crowd than the rest of the Opens during the year, for no real reason that I can put my finger on (its in Dublin, but so is the IO, and the quality is generally higher at the NIO, though I have to say the NIO was much stronger 2 or 3 years ago…). Format was one round of poules, with 8 poules in total, five of 6 fencers and 3 of five fencers. For some weird reason the 1,2, and 3 seeds all had small poules which skewed seeding to some degree, however it didn’t make much difference in the end as they all swept their poules and eventually placed well.

My poule was self-reffed so I barely saw any action outside of my own poule, so please pardon the self-centered coverage… It had a pretty top-heavy distribution with myself and David White, a perennial contender from BFC who moves very well. Òther competitors were Patrick van der Poll (a Dutchman), Colin Hogan, Killian Hanlon, and Helmi Yasim, most of whom are novice fencers.

The poule initially went well for myself with two 5-1′s and two 5-0′s, but the final match against David White was tricky. I got an early lead of 4-1 with a few deliberate second intentions (which incidentially seemed to be my go-to for most of the day, no idea why…) and an attack on prep, but White pulled it back to 4-3 in the final minute of the bout before I closed it out with a simple parry-riposte. It was good to see Helmi pick up a win in the poule as a first year fencer, but I have to confess that I don’t remember who he picked it up against (think it was Killian).

As I said before I didn’t see much of the other poules but judging by the seeding for DEs I’m inferring that nothing too unusual happened, although Kevin Maher dropped a match and Grant Couper seeded 15th, so I’m curious as to what happened there, as I expected them to seed slightly higher.

With 45 competitors it meant a lot of byes for the L64, so not too much to recap here. Helmi and Rudin fenced in an all-UCD beginner match, with the final outcome being very close at 15-11. In a match between potential IV squad members, UCD’s Mitch Carr beat UCC’s Yangxiao Ou without much difficulty 15-7. The L64 also saw strong performances from UCD and UCC novices Brian Dudley and Rory Hayes, with Brian losing 15-9 to the much more experienced Noel McGlynn and Rory beating UCD’s beginner Andrew Dickson 15-4.

This made way for a very lopsided L32, with only two matches being closer than 15-10. David White had a tight match against Jel van Diemen, another Dutchman, eventually losing it 15-11. The other match was UCC’s coach Ruari MacUnfraidh against Trinity’s squad fencer Li Dong, which I personally reffed. Ruari dominated the tempo for the most part, with the majority of his points coming from marching attacks which he was able to finish when Li eventually countered, and he eventually won out 15-11. In what was probably the most anxious and emotional moment of the day for myself, Li, in one of his counterattacks, fleched and then backpedaled into the table holding up the two fed pistes, which rocked from leg to leg three times before settling back down. Visions of myself as competition organizer having to explain the sudden loss of over 10 grand of equipment to the federation didn’t quite leave me for the rest of the day.

On an Intervarsity note, both UCD, UCC, and TCD all had something good to take away from the L32, with UCC’s Michalis Kirmidlis and TCD’s Declan Gibbons each picking up relatively easy wins. UCD’s Kevin Maher also faced UCC’s Rory Hayes, and while it was a tightly fought and slow paced match, Kevin was able to move up into a higher gear, getting several very nice close quarters and flick hits, eventually winning 15-7.

Moving onto the L16 saw the competition noticeably tighten up. Callum Bodels knocked off van Diemen in a very tight 15-12 match, and Declan Gibbons also pushed through a tough L16, beating Alastair Houldsworth in the end. Kevin Maher was paired up against Patrik Bestle, a German from the university of Mainz. Bestle was quicker out of the blocks, jumping out to a 8-3 lead. Kevin woke up to a degree and utlitized the piste much more after the break, but the damage was done and Bestle won 15-9. It was also a rough L16 for UCC, who saw Michalis beaten 15-4 by Conor Nagle, and Ruari beaten 15-2 by myself (again, lots of deliberate second intentions). Perhaps the most interesting match of the L16 was Stephen Brown vs Grant Couper, who had fenced a very tight match in UCD in the Intermediates only a few months ago. With Grant looking for revenge, he pushed out to an initial 5-4 lead, but Stephen made several key adjustments during the break, resulting in a massive momentum shift, and entered the next break up 10-5, and eventually successfully closed out the match 15-10.

The semis saw the left-handers dominate one side of the tableau, with Fergal Martin and Stephen Brown beating Peter Brown and Callum Bodels, respectively. On the other side of the tableau, Conor beat Declan relatively comfortably at 15-5, though each point was hard-fought. The tightest L8 match saw myself fencing Patrik Bestle. I jumped out to an initial 5-2 lead, but at that point I dropped the intensity slightly and Bestle made some adjustments of his own, and brought back seven unanswered points to make the score 9-5 in his favor going into the break. I got some great advice from my coach and teammates during the break, and while I was able to implement it to some degree, I missed some crucial ripostes and Patrik prevailed, winning 15-11.

The semi’s were also relatively straightforward, with Conor easily beating Patrik 15-6, and Fergal winning a hilarious match against Stephen. Even though he didn’t make the final, Stephen’s performance should still be good enough to push him higher into the top 10.

The final unsurprisingly saw clubmates and the number 1 and number 2 ranked Irish fencers Conor Nagle and Fergal Martin go at it in a rematch of the previous year. The entire fight was very evenly contested, with no fencer being able to pull away by more than a point or so. Very few fencers gave much away defensively, with the majority of points following failed attacks. Conor eventually pulled away to a 14-12 lead late in the third period, but Fergal was able to claw back a point to make it 14-13. With less than 20 seconds on the clock, Fergal pushed Conor deep into his own end of the piste, but was able to come up with the key point before time expired, with Conor repeating last year’s victory.

You’ll all hear from me soon enough when I write up the IV’s in a couple week’s time, I’ll try to get a decent look at every weapon for that!

Recap from an Irish Open that was strangely weird and anticlimatic at the same time.

Turnout wasn’t massive this year, an annual casualty of the London satellite, but one which also gives a window to fencers on the fringes to bring home a good result. A lot of fencers who normally don’t compete came out of the woodwork as well, which led to a crazy distribution of quality in the poules. There were 31 fencers total, who were dispersed over five poules. Two poules were particularly top-heavy. Conor Nagle, Declan Gibbons, and Michalis Kirmidlis were all in one poule (all of whom having represented Ireland in past 5 Nations and Student 5 nations), and another had Philip Lee, Ned Mitchell, and myself (same international representation as above, and all incidentally all ex-captains or current captains of UCD/TCD). By contrast, the other 5 fencers in the top 15 (Grant Couper, Peter Brown, Stephen Brown, Alastair Houldsworth, Kevin Maher) were split into the remaining 3 poules.

Stephen Brown won his poule, the only close match coming against Alastair, who jumped out to a 3-0 lead before Stephen stormed back to win 5-0. Peter Brown comfortably won his poule, seeding either first or second (my memory fails me). Conor won his poule, though he got a scare from Michalis who was leading 4-3 in their match before Conor brought it back. Kevin had difficulty in his poule, losing a tight match to Callum Bodels 5-4, and narrowly winning over Ward Klootz, a dark horse from the Netherlands. Klootz went on to beat Callum, completely screwing up the poule. My poule was won by Ned, who had close matches against myself and Philip (each 5-3), but otherwise was very comfortable and only dropped a few points. I also lost my match to Philip, but otherwise had a very successful poule, winning my other matches 5-0, 5-0, and 5-1.

Besides my match against Laurence Slater (a pretty comfortable 15-6), I have to confess that I pretty much completely missed the L32, as I ran into a couple friends from school and stayed in the cafe with them to catch up. Looking at the results though, there weren’t any significant surprises in the L32. I thought that  a couple fencers like John O’Sullivan and Rory Hayes should have made the L16, but a couple casualties of seeding are to be expected in a big event like the IO. There is one match I noticed that I do want to comment on though- Kris Gwynne vs Duncan Salter in the L32. Kris won, and won very comfortably (he’s a good fencer, was the lower seed but was another casualty of seeding- in same poule as me), even though Duncan is a very competent fencer as well. I’m pointing this out because this was a classic case of very tall fencer vs very short fencer. As a very short fencer, I’m going to come out and say right now that the idea that taller fencers have a significant advantage is completely wrong, at least in foil (though I personally have never had any problems in epee either).

This is the reason why: I’ve noticed (and there’s no point in denying it either, all you tall fencers know its true) that tall fencers, when they know they’re going to fence someone much smaller than them, decide “I’m going to beat this guy by being tall, the only way they can beat that is by getting close, and I wont let them”, You know, fence normally, but throw in a few long lunges, counter and then take fast steps backward so the opponent finishes out of distance, etc. THIS IS A MISTAKE- against an average-sized fencer, this would make sense, accentuating a slight advantage to catch them out on a couple points. But this can be detrimental if a very small fencer knows the tall fencer will fence like this. Small fencers can change direction much quicker, and can accelerate faster in a much tighter time frame. So once a tall fencer has lunged (and attack failed), a small fencer can do a quick step lunge and nail them on recovery, or if a tall fencer is defensive and steps back with point out, a small fencer can just push slowly until they have to step forward, and then just fleche into their prep before they can put their foot down and change direction. This is exactly what Kris did, and he won very comfortably in a match in which both fencers had relatively equal skill, just because he knew what to do against a tall person who tried to hammer in an advantage which wasn’t actually there. Learn from this, tall fencers, or you’re going to lose matches you shouldn’t against very small fencers. Save your reach for average fencers, anything past that has seriously diminishing marginal returns.

Tangent over… focus back to the IO….

The L16 saw the competiton tighten up in a big way, and a lot of seedings were overturned. Declan beat Philip 15-14 in a very tight match. Dec hadn’t been training much in the run-up to the competition, but he did a very good job of imposing his game on Philip, while having the patience to drag it out and wait for the right openings. The match between Kev and Michalis was similar, as Michalis weathered the early storm against Kev, who was aggressively attacking off the bat and pushed out to a 6-2 lead. Once Michalis became comfortable with Kev’s attacking repetoire, he adapted his defense and pushed back with a few attacks of his own, bringing the match back onto even ground. Kev didn’t give himself time to adapt to Michalis, and the match ended 15-13 in Michalis’ favor with only 2 minutes elapsed in the first period. I fenced Klootz, the 5th seeded Dutchman. This was another example of very tall vs very small fencer, with a couple quick attacks on my part into Klootz when he was flat footed proving the difference in a very evenly contested 15-13 decision in my favor. The rest of the matches looked relatively straighforward, though it is worth noting that Li Dong looked very impressive in what was ultimately a losing effort against Conor.

The L8 had two tight matches and two straighforward matches. Conor put Michalis easily away after a relative tight first period (it never ceases to amaze me how much Conor learns and adapts as a DE progresses), and Peter Brown beat Alastair without much difficulty. Ned beat Stephen in a much closer match. Ned jumped out to a very big lead, but Stephen tightened things up and brought it back as close as 14-12 before eventually losing 15-12. I fenced Declan in a very tight match. Things were pretty even in the first period, with the majority of our points coming on simple attacks or counterattacks (we’re both very bouncy fencers, these are the easiest opening to take). At the end of the first period it was 7-7. I adjusted better during the break, coming out strong and building a 10-7 and then 12-9 lead. However, (and it’s going to bug me until the next competition) I relaxed at this point, and Declan got back into it (deservedly so, very patiently kept working until he found the right openings) and brought it back and won 15-14.

From there, the semis were pretty straightforward, with Conor and Peter winning comfortably against Ned and Declan respectively. I would have expected it to be closer in terms of skill, but Ned and Dec had both had very long, difficult DEs, whereas Conor and Peter didn’t (and consequently were fresher). The final between Peter and Conor was initially very close, with the score 4-3 at one point about halfway into the 1st period. However, the next point was awarded to Conor (attack parry riposte touche) while Peter thought it was his beat attack. Peter got very hung up on this, and his fencing was noticeably worse afterward. By contrast, Conor ramped it up to a higher gear, and comfortably won 15-7, a lopsided result for what was a very hotly contested day.

Hi everyone,

Apologies for the delay in updating, I know its been a while. Hopefully my memory of the competitions isn’t too diminished!

We’ll go with the Inters first…

It was a surprisingly big competition at 27 or so, much bigger than the year before. As always with the Inters though, the variation in skill and experience is surprisingly wide. Despite seeding the top 6 entrants the poules were very messy, with very few making it through even one round of poules unbeaten. If memory serves I think Tom Paradyk was the only unbeaten, feel free to correct me on that though!

Even though the poules made for a slightly messy tableau, the L32 re-established some semblance of order, with no big surprises in that round. However, a lot of the disorder from the poules played out in the L16. Cian Blaix was pitted against Grant Couper, who won very convincingly. Cian seemed unable to figure out Grant’s defense, and once he began to lapse into counterattacking on his own end, the fight was essentially sealed for Grant. The surprise Paradyk knocked of Noel McGlynn, and three of the four Northern Juniors (Bodels, Gwynne, Brown) progressed to the L8, the onle one not advancing being Gourley who was eliminated by a very solid Keith Halloran.

The L8 saw some very tight fencing. Matthew Tracey knocked off the top seeded Paradyk with very efficient direct attacks and some fantastic distance. I personally had seen many fencers trip up on Paradyk’s style of absence of blade and tight distance the whole day, but Matthew did a very nice job of just staying solid and choosing his moments. On the same side of the tableau, Stephen Brown fenced Grant Couper. This was perhaps the tightest match of the day. Stephen’s defence was rock solid, mixing up his parries and counters to suit the situation, but was getting very little going offensively. Grant, on the other hand, was working very hard on getting some nice attacks going (with some success), but in my opinion didn’t capitalize on Stephen’s lack of a strong attack enough. Instead, he committed to trying to beat Stephen’s defense and Stephen pulled through in what felt like an upset (even though he was seeded higher and went on to prove the win wasn’t a fluke with later results). The other side of the tableau was much quieter, with the ‘favorites’ Kevin Maher and Keith Halloran advancing against Rory Hayes and Kris Gwynne respectively. Even though both matches were close, both Keith and Kevin were able to turn it up a gear in the final period and finish off their matches without much difficulty.

The L4 had comparatively less drama, with Kev fencing Keith and Stephen fencing Matthew. Which both matches were close enough, Stephen and Kev looked very comfortable the whole time and both progressed with relative ease, Kev making use of very nice attacks in particular and Stephen using very solid defense.

The final saw Stephen and Kevin fence for what I believe is the first time in a DE. Unfamiliar with the other, both were initially very careful, and the bout was very close at the start. However, Kev began to commit to some very risky attacks and allowed Stephen to build up a very sizable lead (I think it was 9-4). Kev made some adjustments at the break, and when he came out he began attacking Stephen’s wide line (both are lefties), and had comparative success compared to earlier, bringing the fight back almost even. In response, Stephen began to get some attacks going, landing two very nice attacks with complete absence of blade to all but seal the match which he eventually won.

Now for the Wests….

This was essentially a lost competition for me, so I’ll try to focus more on others and not myself (I know, excuses, excuses, but I was up until 5 in the morning before at my girlfriend’s debs! I’m allowed to fence awful the following day!)

Same as the Inters, there were two rounds of poules, with 19 total fencers. It was split into 4 poules per round, which I know many fencers weren’t happy with as they would have preferred poules of 6 or 7, but I suppose the administrators had to deal with a lot that day. The poules again were very messy, with very inconsistent fencing from all competitors. I believe Clarke Little and Grant Couper were the only ones to win all their matches. I personally was awful during the poules, seeding in the bottom half of the tableau and managing to break a toe, but I managed to get a behind-the-back hit at one stage which I suppose made up for it. I don’t remember much from the poules, but I remember I was very impressed with how Rory Hayes was fencing, and I think he was unfortunate not to progress further than he did.

The L32 was very small, with only 2 or 3 matches being fenced. The L16 saw a few big names being bumped out prematurely (perhaps the small poules werent accurate enough?). Most notable among these was Cian Blaix, who had a tight match with Noel Rogers, who eventually pulled away with a very solid 3rd period. Kris Gwynne was also eliminated by myself in this stage, and I think he was unfortunate not to progress past me. Obviously I was very immobile on the piste with the toe, but Kris stayed out for too long on some of his attacks, letting me pick up a few parry ripostes which gave me the edge in a very close 15-12 or 15-13 fight. Beyond that- no real surprises, although I was surprised that John O Sulivan didn’t make the L8, but again that may have to do with seeding.

The L8 was exciting enough, with a very close match between Grant and Noel, and a very emotional match between Kev and Ruari. Grant and Noel’s match was very tight. Grant eked out a lead at the beginning, catching Noel out by using some very nice distance. Noel began to tighten up in the 2nd period however, and brought the match back onto essentially even ground before Grant snatched victory in the end. Kev and Ruari’s match was possibly the most wild match I had seen all day. Both fencers were aggressively attacking each other, with the vast majority of lights coming on attacks and counterattacks, with very little apparent bladework at all. The final score was 15-9 after just one minute and 45 seconds!! Needless to say both fencers got very heated, with Ruari disputing several of my calls towards the end. Obviously I can’t be objective here, but no one else saw anything wrong with the calls so I think it was just the wildness of the moment as opposed to my calls, though I think I’ll let the commenters have final say on that. My match with Clarke was much more tame, with him easily beating my poor, hungover self (I know, enough excuses =P) 15-6 or 15-7.

The L4 was very tight. Kevin Maher fenced Clarke Little, and in a match where Clarke was heavily favorite, took the match to him. I had noticed in my L8 that Clarke looked uncomfortable going backwards, and Kev used this very well, keeping on significant pressure and eventually losing a surprisingly tight bout 15-12. It was also surprisingly close on the other side, with Grant Couper and Fergal Martin pitted against each other. Fergal looked very sluggish and static on the piste for most of the fight, and Grant capitalized on this, holding a very slim lead for most of the match. However, Fergal kicked it up a gear in the final period, stringing together 3 or 4 very nice direct attacks to finish the match (15-13 I think).

The final was unfortunately not as tightly fought as the semis, with Fergal and Clarke fighting it out for first place. While both fencers were moving well, Fergal appeared to “have Clarke’s number” as we say in the states (do you say that here? Not sure I’ve come across it). Fergal started strong, and even though Clarke managed to get some points back it seemed more through an easing of tempo on Fergal’s part, who subsequently kicked it up a gear to finish off the fight (15-9 if memory serves).

So, an exciting couple weeks of competition! While it didn’t precipitate many big moves, a couple interesting things are emerging. Fergal is definitely solidifying his number one slot, and Clarke is now in a very comfortable 4th place. I on the other hand have slipped several places, and now less than 10 points separate myself and Kev from being the number one ranked student- the Irish Open now looks a little more interesting! Stephen Brown has also forced his way into the top ten, meaning that there are 3 U20 Northern Irish fencers in the top 10. Next up is hopefully Derry if I can make it!

Trying to coagulate a coherent recount of a pretty wild competition here…

The absence of last year’s winner, Conor Nagle, coupled with the inclusion of 3 out of the 4 finalists from Men’s Epee and Men’s Sabre meant that this one was was pretty much wide open at the start of the day. There were 30 entrants, which meant two rounds of poules with 5 poules in each round. Fergal, Kevin, David Burnside, and myself all came out of the blocks hot in the first round of poules, winning all matches. Andrew Fenwick also swept what was probably the “poule of death”, which included Ronan Quinn, Matthew Treacy, and Cian Blaix.

While nothing too unexpected happened in the first round of poules, things started getting shaken up in the second round of poules. Fergal, David Burnside, and I all swept our poules. I was particularly happy with mine as I only dropped a single point, consequently stealing the first seed- though in hindsight this may have been a bad sign that I was peaking too early in the competition. Outside of those 3 poules things began to get a little crazy. Andrew Fenwick again won every match in another hotly contested poule, in which Li Dong won four matches and lost to Andrew 5-3, and Noel Rogers won three but lost to Li and Andrew 5-4. Lastly, Kev, the first seed in his group, had a nightmare poule and (bear with me) dropped three matches to Callum Bodels, Cian Blaix, and Rory Hayes respectively, each of whom only lost to each other, with Cian beating Rory, Rory beating Callum, and Callum beating Cian.

Despite the wildness of the second round of poules, the overall tableau for DE’s was relatively normal-looking, as both rounds of poules had counted towards DE seeding. I was only really surprised to see Cian Blaix and Noel Rogers at 10 and 11, as I had expected them to seed slightly higher. While it was unusual to see David Burnside and Andrew Fenwick rounding out the top four and Jimbo Nicholls at 8, it certainly wasn’t surprising, as the epeeists had won every match that day even after the effort of making it to the finals the previous day.

Nothing too surprising happened in the L32, with every higher ranked seed advancing except John O Sullivan, the 17th seed who beat the 16th seed. Probably the most notable thing that happened was Kevin Maher’s opponent, Alan Corbett, scratched himself, giving Kev a much needed bye during which he could sort out his head after having a rough second round of poules. There was also a rematch of the Schull semifinal of last year, with Matthew Treacy beating Ronan Quinn 15-10.

Things began to heat up more up in the L16. Fergal and Cian coasted past Rory Mc Unfraidh and Li Dong, while Andrew and myself beat Rory Hayes and John O sullivan 15-4 and 15-6 respectively. A couple surprising results also came through, with Callum Bodels (who fenced very well throughout the competition) beating Noel McGlynn 15-7 and David Burnside beating Matthew Treacy 15-1! I know that several people weren’t happy with the refereeing in that match, but it was clear that David was the better fencer and Matthew’s head wasn’t really there. Jimbo and Julian had a tight (and entertaining) match in which Julian pulled out to an early lead, but after Jimbo made some adjustments he chipped away at it and almost pulled it back, with Julian winning in the end 15-13. Perhaps the highlight of the L16 was the match between Noel Rogers and Kev. The match was very tightly contested, with neither fencer dominating or ever establishing firm control of the match, however the higher-seeded Kev prevailed at the end of the long match, 15-13.

The L8 saw Fergal start to ramp up into form, beating Cian Blaix 15-2, while I beat Julian Hayes 15-8 in a relatively comfortable match. The other two quarterfinal matches were much tighter, with Andrew Fenwick fencing Callum Bodels and Kevin fencing David Burnside. Callum led for most of the match against Andrew, and held that lead as late as the 3rd period when he had an 13-10 advantage. However, Andy started to come through (and land on target =P) pulling out a 15-14 win. In the other match, David Burnside had an initial lead over Kev, who looked baffled in the first period. However, after making one or two tactical changes at the break, Kev pulled the lead back, and David never really recovered, with the final score of 15-13 not feeling as close as it suggests.

In the semis Fergal was matched up against Kev, and I was matched up against Andy. Kev fenced well against Fergal and scored some very nice touches, but never really came close to taking away the edge from Fergal, who won 15-9. My match against Andy was pretty see-saw, as I jumped out to a 6-2 lead, getting most of my points through defense, which i was pretty surprised at considering andy is an epeeist and I was intending to attack him and abuse right of way. However, I began to wear down in the second period, and andy began to land more direct attacks as I became more stationary on the piste. At the end of the second period Andy was winning 12-11 and I was totally gassed. While I managed to pull it back to 12-12 coming out of the break, Andy kept pushing through and mixing up his game and he deservedly won 15-12.

After de-kitting I got called out to ref (which was great because it meant that I’ll actually remember most of it) what was undoubtedly the most exciting match of the day , meaning that both finalists clearly deserved to be there. It was a match fought at very tight distance, with the majority of lights coming on counterparry ripostes and second intentions. Fergal kept on pulling out very slight leads (I remember 2-0, 7-5, and 12-10), but Andy kept on pulling the match back onto even territory. Towards the end of the second period Andy pulled the score back to 12-12 and Fergal seemed genuinely at a loss for what to do at one stage. However, Fergal got himself back together and closed out the match with a couple really nice attacks down the piste and won in the end 15-13.

List of L8 places:

1- Fergal 2- Andy 3- John 3- Kev 5- David 6- Callum 7- Julian 8- Cian

Well the summer (and offseason) are roughly halfway though at this stage, and I figured that without the excuse of any other work to hide behind, I’d get my act together and get a Foil blog going! Stephen’s done a great job with Sabre for the past while, and with me planning on competing and/or admin-ing a lot of competitions this coming year, I figured I’d give blogging the results a shot. Since there’s sweet FA to talk about until the South of Ireland Open, which is still a month away, I’m going to throw in a quick recap of last year for context, and a couple predictions on the upcoming year (so we can all see if my foresight is any good).

Last year kicked off pretty much where the previous year ended, with Nagle steamrolling his way to victory in the South’s, and following that up with a string of strong performances, particularly at the East’s, Merseyside, and Copenhagen satellite. Fergal also put together a very good season, winning the West’s and reaching the finals in the East’s and Irish Open. While this season saw the absence of perennial finalist Evgeniy from competitive fencing, it also saw the rise of several younger competitors. Clarke Little rose comfortably to third place in the Irish rankings, winning the Glasgow Open and reaching the final of the Northern Irish Open along the way. Brendan Cusack, while not domestically based, has had a phenomenal international season, winning the Irish Open and reaching the last 16 in the Senior European Champs. Possibly due to a BFA ranking system change (though I really am not sure about this) more Northern fencers have begun regularly traveling down for Irish events, such as Alexander, Houldsworth, and Brown, who all achieved top-10 Irish ranking points. I also had a pretty good season, cracking the top five, but worryingly for me a lot of the strong results came in competitions with selective entry criteria (such as the Student Individuals), and I have to get my act together and consistently perform if I want to push further.

On an Intervarsity level, the demographics are definitely shifting somewhat. Trinity still have several very high quality fencers, but they largely abstained from individual competition (hey, it worked, they got their fourth IV in a row). However, this past year has also seen the emergence of very strong Novice fencers from other colleges, such as Mitch Carr of UCD (who reached the semifinal in the Student Individuals) and Matthew Tracey from UCC (who won Schull and has had a very consistent season). The competitiveness of IV fencing was reflected in the nominations for the Student Five Nations, namely myself, Ned, Kevin, and Cian, all of whom were based in different universities (although UCD has since poached Kev). This past year also saw the recent departure of Tristan, a fantastic coach, the loss of whom affects all the fencers who had him for individual or group lessons.

So what does this all mean for next year?

Well, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that in the short term, whoever has had a good offseason will do well in the Souths. In that instance (depending on who shows), expect fencers like Fergal and Matthew to do well since they are very consistent offseason workers in my experience. In the long term of the season as a whole, if the trend of Northern participation continues, I’d expect either Little or Alexander to make a serious push at cracking the top two, with Nagle and Fergal still staying right at the mix at the top. I’d also expect some serious shifts at club level, as several fencers newer to the game begin to get more experience (names like Mitch and Duncan Salter, who just did very well in the Pembroke League) and push their rankings up from the 30s to the 20s and from the 20s into the teens. I also would not be surprised if one of the older guys (like Carnec for example) goes to a succession of competitions and throws themself into the mix in the top ten, if not five. As for myself, I’ll do what I can (though that is also very dependent on who I fence). My goal will be to come away from competitions with medals more often than I don’t. We’ll see how right or wrong I am!