EFA Centenary Drinks Reception And Awards
04/05/24: The EFA's Centenary Year was launched in style on Wednesday evening with a well-attended reception that featured this year's awards presentation.
EFA Chair Matt Chinery and Advanta Wealth CEO Craig Webster handed out the awards for the 2023/24 season - which members of the Fives community have been voting for over the last few weeks - to the following deserving recipients:
Team of the Year
1. Old Westminsters
2. Team Westway
3. Old Salopians
Young Player of the Year
1. Gwydion Wiseman
2. Charlotte Barr
3. Sam Kaynama/Ben Spooner
Coach of the Year
1. Mark Halstead
2. Laurence Gribble
3. Adam Morris
Player of the Year
1. Riki Houlden
2. Hugo Young
3. Charlotta Cooley
All of the winners were present to collect their awards, the result of some splendid performances during the course of the season and in the case of Cranleigh Prep coach Mark Halstead, also a well-earned acknowledgement of many years of excellent and sometimes underappreciated coaching, although with typical modesty Mark was quick to ackowledge the contributions of others, especially the remarkable pair of girls who won Cranleigh's first ever senior schools' championships title this year and his colleague of over 10 years, Harry Thomas.
This year's Advanta Wealth Unsung Hero Award was an especially poignant one, with Old Edwardian Peter Scholey receiving the award on behalf of Keith Turnbull, who sadly died earlier this year, with the following words:
"Keith Turnbull learned his Fives as a pupil at King Edward's School, Birmingham in the 1970s at a time when it was one of the most successful Fives-playing schools in the country. He continued playing at Cambridge University, where he was twice a Half-Blue and went on to become a member of the highly successful Warwickshire and Old Edwardian teams of the 80s and 90s, always finding time to play and keep in touch with the game despite a successful and globe-trotting career in technology and software development. No doubt many of you will have come across him over the years as both an excellent and highly competitive opponent and as a charming and convivial off court companion.
What you may not know is the extent to which Keith has been involved in recent years in the efforts to revive the game at King Edward's and to safeguard its future, efforts which are slowly beginning to bear fruit.
By 2015, a combination of factors had led to the sport at the school being at a low ebb - the roof had come off in a storm, the long-term Master-in-Charge George Worthington had retired as had the formerly supportive Chief Master John Claughton and there was little or no Fives expertise or interest among the existing staff.
And so in 2016, the EFA approached Keith to see if he would come on board to help find a way to save the courts and to restore the game to its former glories. We are now eight years on from our first attempts and progress has been at times slow and often frustrating with a rapid turnover of Chief Masters, a global pandemic and a 30 year school facilities masterplan to negotiate, but Keith has been there throughout - contacting and cajoling other Old Edwardians via email and phone and in person at OE dinners to help out, attending meetings at the school to scope out the extent of the work needed on the roof, and finally making the breakthrough thanks to his connections with Ian Metcalfe, a fellow OE and Chair of the Masterplan committee. This led to a meeting with the firm of Architects running the masterplan project, a meeting at which Keith's commitment to and enthusiasm for the sport and the project were crucial in getting them on side. This has now led us to our current position, where the school are beginning to re-engage with Fives and starting to encourage more boys to play under the expert coaching eye of Jon Shorrocks and where the prospect of a new roof being put on the courts and also the adjacent girls school taking up the game are tantalisingly within our grasp.
None of this would have been possible without Keith and it came as a huge shock to us all when he died suddenly a couple of months ago at the age of just 65.
The EFA and the Old Edwardian Fives club are determined to push on with the KES Fives project in Keith's memory, and when the courts there finally do get a new roof, we will have Keith's dedication and perseverance to thank.
We did wonder whether it was right to present the traditional bottle of champagne, so we asked ourselves what would Keith have wanted? To anybody who knew him the answer is obvious… Keith would want his champagne and I will make sure that it is passed on to his family."
The Lifetime Achievement award this year was not presented as it is being saved for the Centenary Dinner in the Long Room at Lord's on Thursday October 24th (tickets on sale very soon - watch this space!), which will be the centrepiece event of the EFA's Centenary year. Amongst other things, the Centenary year will also feature the reopening of the refurbished Eton courts alongside the new Constantinidi Eton Fives centre, the exciting opening of the new courts at Holyport - guests were able to see the latest drone footage of the courts going up - and the launch of a new online EFA archive, with Chris Davies outlining the ongoing work to create a fully digitised and searchable archive for all things Eton Fives, including an exhortation for clubs, schools and individuals to seek out and provide additional material. All Fives players and clubs are also encouraged to organise their own events to celebrate the Centenary - please get involved!
Continuing the theme, the evening also featured an exhibition of Eton Fives artefacts, including the 1924 Eton Fives Keeper's book from Eton, a Fives cannon, the 1920s photo album of Sidney Hogben, who introduced Fives to Nigeria and a copy of the receipt for two pairs of Fives gloves and a dozen balls that was found in a pocket when the body of George Mallory was finally recovered in 1999 from near the top of Mount Everest following his death there in 1924.