Although there is some doubt, at least north of Watford Gap, whether it is actually spring a number of us are still descending on Stratford-upon-Avon for the Spring Foursomes this weekend.
It is comfortably the toughest weekend tournament of the year in the UK, starting on Friday night and finishing on Tuesday evening, a double-elimination event based on 32-board matches.
This year there are 47 teams registered, which means triads for all the teams except two in the first round. Unless a team from Argentina turns up announced, which happened last year, or someone enters late, which I'm sure the organisers would welcome.
Seeding is done on EBU Gold Points and then they estimate the foreigners, such as the Scots. The teams featuring Scottish players are:
(#13) Rees - Paul Barton, Sam Punch, Tim Rees & Brian Spears
(#16) Teltscher - Willie Coyle, John Mattheson, Ed Scerri, Victor Silverstone, Bernard Teltscher & Kitty Teltscher
(#21) Sanders - Cliff Gillis, John Murdoch, Stephen Peterkin & Derek Sanders
(#25) Smith - Robert McPaul, Adrian Orlowski, Laura Porro & Harry Smith
(#27) Gipson - Sheila Adamson, Alex Gipson, Paul Gipson & Anne Symons
(#33) Morrison - Frazer Morgan, Philip Morrison, Philip Stephens & Alex Wilkinson
(#35) Barnes - David Barnes, Nigel Guthrie, Barry Wennell & Beth Wennell
(#39) Kane - Danny Kane, Helen Kane, Stephen Male & Mike McGinley
Only the top thirty-two teams are seeded, the remainder randomly ordered. But it doesn't really matter, all that counts is how well you play if you want to survive. So who do we all play in the first two matches?
REES plays Mike BELL, our Premier League team mates from last year who is playing with the top Welsh pair. This will feel more like a Camrose match for both teams. To make it feel even more homily, the third team, KURBALIJA, is also Welsh featuring three of their Lady Milne team.
TELTSCHER plays DUFFELEN, who has a Dutch Bermuda Bowl pair in his team, and ROPER who are unknown to me.
SANDERS plays the Norwegians, TONDEL, and Pattinson, who are unknown to me.
SMITH received a generous seeding but still got LIGGINS, featuring two of the holders, and SHAH, a team of top English juniors.
We play SEALE, who we played last year and also in the Premier League, and NONNENMACHER, the English U20 team who are off to the World Youth Championships in June.
Once again MORRISON has been hard done by in the seedings and then the random draw. They were probably not helped by some of the team being based in England and therefore Gold Points counting for them. They play ALLFREY, the English Open team for the Bermuda Bowl in September, and MILLER, a good team but one they'd expect to beat.
BARNES plays Rune HAUGE's strong Norwegian team and then Tracy CAPAL's experienced team.
KANE plays Janet DE BOTTON's all-star team and FELDMAN, featuring two talented young players and England's Bermuda Bowl coach (who is also young and may be talented).
The semifinal and final will be shown on BBO on Tuesday.
Good luck to all of us.
You can keep up to date with all the results on the
EBU web site or follow me on Twitter for our progress.