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After 20 years, North Yorkshire enters the ESMBA ICC
After 20 years, North Yorkshire enters the ESMBA ICC 11
For the 2011/12 season, North Yorkshire and Stockport Metro, as winners and runners up
of the Northern England (NESMBA) IC league, were invited by Keith Hawkins to join the
ESMBA Inter-County Competition at the knockout stages. This was an unprecedented move and
it was hoped that this “coming together” of the Northern and National inter-county competitions
would continue with the support of the other NESMBA counties. However, this was not to be and
the NESMBA members voted not to support this arrangement but to continue with their separate
competition, which had been running successfully for the last 20 years, unchanged.
This left North Yorkshire with a difficult decision to make for 2012/13. Our premier county
side had won the NESMBA league for 3 consecutive years by an ever increasing margin and some
players felt that a more challenging level of competition was now desirable. Team members were
therefore canvassed and by a majority vote it was decided to withdraw one of our 2 teams from
the NESMBA league and join in the ICC wholeheartedly.
This was not a flippant decision. We knew we would get fewer games in the ICC and we
knew we would be in one of the toughest groups with Shropshire, West Midlands and multiple
ICC winners, Cheshire. But we had 4 England squad members in our own team as well as two of
the England Ladies team and hopes were high that we could make some sort of impression on
the national scene and improve our level of play still further.
Our first match proved to be a veritable baptism of fire when we lost our ICC virginity at the
hands of Cheshire (away) with a very hard to come by 6 points. However this was to prove our
worst result of the season and apart from a similar game which only produced 9 points when we
visited West Midlands, we felt reasonably satisfied with all our other results especially the 25-15
win over Cheshire when they visited us for our final group game.
In the consolation knockout against Cornwall we went out by 18-22 when we seemed to have
the match in the bag. All in all a very satisfactory first season and all we can say to all our oppo-
nents for next year is watch out. We now know what it’s all about!!

North Yorkshire County Premier team
(Gareth Townend and Sean Conroy not present)