The 2nd FA Cup Challenge match between Boldon and Primrose squash clubs took place on Saturday 17th May 2025. The event was again hosted by Boldon Squash Club and took the same format as last year; 15 a-side teams ranked in Squash Levels order. The match format was best of 5, PAR scoring to 11 with a sudden-death point at 10-10.
The first round of matches started at 12 noon and featured Barry Fellows who edged Colin Laughton 3-0, Lorna Dawson narrowly losing to Keith Proudlock 2-3 and Omar Sassoon being too strong for Guy Evans, winning 3-1. This put Boldon in the lead 2-1 in matches.
The second round of matches began with Mark Sadler being overpowered by Derek Allan, even accounting for Mark’s trick shots. Derek won 3-0. In the first match on Boldon’s new “show court”, featuring a recently installed glass back wall Norman Broomfield and Eric Alderson fought out an epic match with Eric winning 3-2. The other 2 matches also ended up 3-2 but in Boldon’s favour. Stuart Finlay beating Tom McKay and Ian Mapstone overcoming a strong challenge from Paul Little. This meant that the overall match score was finely poised at 4-3 to Boldon.
In the third round of matches Primrose began to make their charge. Martin Cowey held a 2-0 lead against John Ord and even had a match ball in the 3rd game before John mounted a tremendous comeback to prevail in the fifth. Charlie Scollen did his usual thing and won 3-1 against Mike Paul, the Primrose hero of last year’s event. The spectators were then treated to probably the match of the competition when Liam Fellows, fresh from playing in Australia met Ryan Sweeney. Each player took it in turns to win games and at 2-2 Ryan produced a series of great shots to run out a 3-2 winner. Dean Barnes played Glen Cranson in the final match of this round with Glen taking the honours 3-1 with Dean admitting “the nerves got to me a bit”. The overall score now stood at 6-5 to Primrose.
In the last round of matches, Marc Shipley took on a much improved Michael Basham and it looked all over for Marc with Michael leading 2-0 and 10-6 in the third. However Marc decided to make a game of it and rallied to force sudden-death and edge it. Marc continued to grow into the match and leveled at 2-2 with the deciding game seeing both players trading winners. Michael however, played the crucial one and came out on top. The top seeds Connor Snaith and Tony Hockey met with Connor answering all of Tony’s questions, running out a 3-1 winner. In the penultimate game an “up for it” Colin Woods was seeking revenge for last year’s loss and duly obliged with a comfortable win over Billy Fyall 3-0. That left the event score at 7-7 in matches going into the game between Tim Smith and Peter Douglas. With the amount of close matches earlier in the day I don’t think anyone, let alone Tim and Peter, knew for sure what the situation was match-wise. To their credit they produced another nail-biter. Peter took the first game on the tie-break and Tim took the second game to level it. Another tie-break in the third game went Tim’s way meaning he was one game away from claiming the trophy for Boldon. However Paul had other ideas and won a close fourth game to make it 2-2, deja vu. In the fifth game Paul got in front and never relinquished the lead, eventually winning 11-6.
The final match score was eventually confirmed as Boldon 7-8 Primose, same as last year. A couple of “interesting” facts from the day; 8 matches went the distance (3-2), Primrose won 6 of them and Boldon 2; 9 games went to a tie-break at 10-10, Boldon won 5 of them and Primrose won 4. After the final match all players were invited to partake in food and drink in the bar before the FA Cup Challenge Trophy was presented to the winning captain, Eric Alderson. Feedback from all involved was very positive with everyone enjoying an excellent event.
Some thank yous need to be given to organisers, Kevin Forster, Mandy Forster and Eric Alderson; Paul Craigs and his helper Vlad, for the food and all players for games that were played in a great spirit.
As soon as the date of the FA Cup Final 2026 is confirmed plans will be put in place to stage the 3rd competition.
Thank you all.
