THE holiday weekend is a busy time for local players and it begins early on Friday as the Aire-Wharfe Association holds the Guardian Merit Trophy at Yeadon Park. Entries are still been taken.

The Skipton Prelims for the Yorkshire ABA’s Merit will be held at Broughton Road on Friday at 6.45pm. The lucky qualifier will represent the area in the finals at Broad Oak, Huddersfield commencing at 11am.

Action continues on Sunday with the annual Yorkshire Parks Inter-City event which will be held in the Hebden Bridge area from 10am. The local representatives, mainly from Cross Roads, are in a tough group with games against Bradford (at Thrum Hall), Leeds Ladies (at Old Town) and Sheffield (at Sowerby T and BC). If they survive that lot, the final is at Hillcrest, but a big effort is needed.

The Skipton Veteran’s team go from bad to worse against Leeds. Once again, the away side did quite well at Bramley Park where the had five winners but just lost the aggregate due to one bad scores.

Meanwhile at Sutton, the home team seemed to be in almost complete disarray with only three winners in Ken Brenkley, Len Buxton and Alden Phillips but went down overall by 24-32. Next game v West Riding, the league leaders, on May 31.

In County action, Yorkshire Ladies beat Lancashire by more than 100 points in a good performance. Sharon Gadd just won at Littlemoor in the home leg, but Viv Abell went down by one point at Penwortham Sports.

The Yorkshire Parks Veterans made only a fair start to the season, going down to old rivals South Yorkshire both at home at Salts, where David Hemsley had a good win, and at Crookesmoor.

The Senior side beat Cumberland and Westmorland in the Parks League with a returning Les Foster disappointed going down by two points at Pudsey.

In the Federation District games, Chris Wilson and David Scott won for Bradford but the team were well beaten by a strong Warrington side, while Peter Hepworth, Andy Uttley and Daryl Gore won for Airedale B despite been outgunned by Doncaster A.

The Skipton Doubles was completed at Alkincoats Park on a fantastic playing surface and it was won by Richard and Trevor Hargreaves who just beat Graham Sharp and Jim Calvert, of Cononley, 21-18.

Trevor has now won the Skipton Doubles 12 times with different partners and Richard eight.

In the Clarkson Cup, there were wins for Steeton A, by one point, SPF A, Sutton A and B, Keighley A and Lund A. Early casualties were holders Rolls Royce and favourites Cononley A, while unluckiest team were lowly Keighley C who actually beat top team Colne Cricket but were kicked out for receiving too much start.