Not for the first time a team from Abbots Road contested the final of the Leicester & District’s summer competition for the Elbow Tankard against one from Knighton Park when the latter, by way of No Parking, sported a decisive 15-5 score line against Abbots All Stars.

All three of the KP trio have ideal styles for handicap events, none of them is prepared to give anything away with control being the name of the game.

As it happens only one of them will be playing for the Park in the league this coming season as Lucky Obi is moving to Syston Casuals while Andy Searle only popped into this team for the summer on the way from Nomads to Electricity.

Searle faced Ross Adams in the first, shared at 1-1 and then George McClurkin for KP also shared with Vishal Parmar. Obi scored a 2-0 success over Fahed Sacoor, only just squeezing home in the second 22-20, before Searle beat Pamar 2-0 to give KP a 6-2 lead going into the doubles.

This provided a little help for Abbots as both were shared at 1-1 to bring the score to 8-4 but a 2-0 success for Obi over Adams put his team within one point of victory at 10-4 with the win confirmed when Searle defeated Sacoor 2-0.

For No Parking, Searle and Obi both won five from six, McClurkin three from four, while Parmar won two for Abbots and Adams one.  Normally the Park players have been giving points away in this competition but in this case they mainly received points, and took full advantage.

In the end, it was on a positive note that the League itself will be kicking off in a couple of weeks’ time as one or two other new teams have joined and the total finally reached 58 teams, one up on last season, with just two of the five divisions having 11 teams instead of 12.

Winstanley Wizards are going great guns with their coaching programme and have no less than five teams playing, getting to that stage in only four seasons, while another group under the guidance of Jason Prescott have a new club in Fleckney with two teams.

It will be particularly interesting watching what happens right in the middle of the League in Division Three. Four teams from last season dropped out as well as teams being promoted which means that several teams from lower down have been propelled upwards into this section who did not expect to be, but all eager to give it a go, including a new experienced team from Electricity who have been placed here.