A Teesdale quoits multiple world champion was part of a Great Britain team that travelled to the USA for a historic fixture.
Richard Watson, from Westwick, joined forces with eight other elite players for the showdown, which took place in Reamstown, Pennsylvania, a town 60 miles from Philadelphia.
It’s the first time ever that a quoits team from the UK has played a competitive fixture in the United States and the match came two years after a US team travelled to Yorkshire to play British opposition.
Richard, who plays for Staindrop in the Zetland League and Bedale Riverside Club in the Lower Dales League, says the two nations first played each other in Kirby Fleetham, North Yorkshire.
On that occasion the Americans edged a tight match, and it was a similar story on US soil late last month.
The Americans lifted the trophy in Pennsylvania by winning eight games of British quoits while the travelling team could only win four games of US quoits.
“Nobody else has played quoits abroad as far as I know,” said Richard, who was on the winning side in the four games he played under American rules and was supported in the US by his daughter Rebecca.
“We played each other over a full weekend. We played our rules one day and we played their rules the next day.
“There are significant differences between the way each country plays,” he added. “We play on clay and they play on grass and the quoits they use are smaller and lighter and you throw them a shorter distance – seven yards instead of nine yards.
“Also, we play singles and doubles over here but they only play doubles and that’s what we did in the competition. There were 32 games of doubles each day and we played a round robin format.”
The link-up between the two quoits playing nations started over the internet and plans were soon drawn up for a UK-USA showdown.
The fixture was initially scheduled for 2020 but lockdown intervened and the two teams eventually played each other two years ago.
Naturally, after the first international ended with a USA win, plans for a rematch on American soil were hatched.
“We were invited back to play them,” said Richard, who has won just about every domestic quoits trophy there is to win and was the only Teesdale-based player in the GB team.
“They were a nice friendly bunch, they really looked after us, and hopefully we can play them again over here and this time we’ll win the trophy.”
