WITH the league campaigns having been concluded seven days earlier, attention turned last Thursday to the last major competitions of the season, the Oxford Mail Trophy and the Oxford Mail Supplementary Cup.

Staged at two separate venues due to the number of entrants, the Trophy is contested by all sides from the Premiership together with those who won their respective divisions.

In the leg held at the Windrush Club (Witney), the Blue Boar Bees, champions of the North, could sort of congratulate themselves for coming out on top in the Trophy section, but they were the only ones competing from that elite group there! Still, 143 was a great effort, good enough for them to wind up third.

From the five combatants battling it out for the other piece of silverware, the White Hart (Eynsham) prevailed, also with the impressive score of 143, and this would lead to them also claiming third place overall.

A larger group gathered at the North Oxford Conservative Club (Summertown), a setting which, as it transpired, was to provide both the eventual winners.

Putting their travails of the previous week behind them, when they were soundly beaten by the Ploughman’s Bunch!, the Plough (Wolvercote) reasserted their superiority over their stablemate and great rival by taking the laurels in this event.

Despite a shoddy opening round, they took the lead in the next, one which they were not to relinquish all the way to the finishing post.

They triumphed with 161 points, five more than the Bunch! with the Royal Blenheim ‘A’ (Oxford City), two of whose members were still basking in the reflected glory of smashing the Eggheads in a recent TV episode (the other members perhaps miffed at not being invited!), in third, also matching the Bees’ 143.

As observed in a previous column, the Black Swan (East Oxford) are a really good outfit, yet so infuriatingly (for them) inconsistent.

They should have taken the East Division but didn’t, the Con Club being the grateful beneficiaries, but they proved their pedigree here by cleaning up and with the third highest total of the entire night.

Their 154 was eight clear of the Seacourt Bridge (Botley) with the White Hart’s endeavours edging out the Green Road Club (Kidlington) whose 141 left them in fourth.

The concluding chapter to the 2014-15 season will be written, again at the North Oxford Conservative Club, in two days’ time with the presentation evening, where various gongs will be handed out and a handicapped quiz held in honour of the man who presided over our empire for many a long year, Ted Payne.

If you would like to submit a side for the Summer Leagues beginning in mid-May, entry closes this Sunday, April 26. Please email quinnd@hotmail.co.uk if you are interested.

Also, check out our website at oxfordshirequizleague.co.uk. It’s colourful, informative and generally interesting if nothing else.