At the SACA headquarters at Hutt Road, Adelaide, 8 pairs contested the SA President’s trophy. Clear winners by Sunday lunchtime were the pairing of Leah O’Neill from Mt Gambier and Philip Brown from Kew, Victoria. The pair had been undefeated throughout the competition. Leah’s accuracy as an experienced AC player who has played for state teams paired well with Philip’s skills and sound strategic understanding of Gateball. Runners up were John and Penny Park from Lithgow, NSW.

Players from Hyde Park, Woodville and Mt Gambier constituted the South Australian contingent at the competition. Both Woodville and Hyde Park hold weekly playing sessions and pairs from both clubs played skillfully and achieved some good wins. Mt Gambier have recently become re-enthused and return home intending to encourage others to play more Gateball.

Unfortunately, on Sunday, one of the Hyde Park pairings had to withdraw from the competition because of sickness. Rather than using the recently posted Gateball Australia default forfeit procedure, it was decided to delete all previous games by this pair from the scoring records.

On both afternoons some short courses were conducted. On Saturday afternoon 4 existing coaches of other codes of mallet sports completed the Gateball endorsement. Another group were introduced to draft level 2 coaching materials for gateball and tried their hand at the draft level 2 skills card which is available to all on this website. On Sunday a rather tired group were briefed on how to become a referee. They were left with self help materials which the state’s only existing referee, Geoff Crook, will hopefully be able to use to support and encourage others in becoming referees.

Graeme Thomas made a great job of organising the competition and his efforts were appreciated by all. Graeme recently resigned from his position on the ACA board, where, as well as being the Hon. Sec., he has been a committed and effective advocate for Gateball over the past few years. He was thanked by the National Coordinator for his efforts and a small presentation was made.