Me and Simon Barton in our Alleyn’s School shirts. Photo by Paul Cattermull
Soon after I started playing real tennis, in 2016, I ran into Paul Cattermull in the viewing gallery at Lord’s. Paul and I had worked together years before, at Binder Hamlyn. I told Paul that I was enjoying the game enormously but finding it really difficult.
But why, Ian? It’s a bit like cricket. Move your feet, get your head over the ball, watch the ball and keep your head still as you hit it…
Indeed, all the shortcomings and techniques I struggled with at cricket are also there to torment me in real tennis. But at least with tennis, if you make a mistake, you just lose one point. Well,15, if you are counting the time-honoured tennis way, but you get my meaning.
Actually it is more like fives than cricket – and at Alleyn’s I was just a bit more than OK at fives.
Anyway, with perseverance and years of fun sporting activity, I have worked my way up the real tennis handicap charts to being very, very average at the game. Indeed, when the Tennis & Rackets Association re-based the handicaps last year, my doubles handicap straddled the median pre and post adjustment value of 55.
As I progressed from “absolute beginner” into “showing some progress towards ordinariness” category, Paul suggested that I find a fellow alum from Alleyn’s School to enter his eponymous “old school” handicap doubles tournament. It was a lovely idea, but for the absence of such an alum with whom to partner.
Then, in January 2025, just before I went into hospital to have my right hip replaced, I had an interesting locker-room chat with relative newbie Simon Barton, which I reported here, learning that Simon too went to Alleyn’s:
Thus the plot was hatched and we agreed to attempt the tournament.
Simon is able to boast having had a single digit handicap and even now maintains a handicap of 14. Unfortunately for me and for our Cattermull Cup campaign, that’s his golf handicap. Simon’s real tennis handicap is in the 70s.
That makes the Cattermull Cup a tough ask for Alleyn’s. Simon’s handicap is above the cut off for this tournament and my limited ability will struggle to cover that shortfall. But we agreed that it would be good experience to give the tournament a go this year, albeit as the lowest ranked pair. We entered in hope, but not with expectation.
Alongside this uphill sporting endeavour, Simon and I have also formed a rather unusual, some might say ghoulish, connection over our avocational history research projects. I am looking at the MCC’s role in the development of cricket and tennis (real and lawn) in the mid to late 19th century, not least the extraordinary efforts of Robert Allan Fitzgerald. Meanwhile Simon, who is described by the website topdoctors.co.uk as an expert in sexual health, is, as one of his hobbies, researching the history of STDs in a similar period.
Parenthetically, biology teacher Tom Gascoigne would have been extremely proud of Simon’s post Alleyn’s medical achievements (as would Chris Liffen & John Clarke), despite Mr Gascoigne’s preference for researching sacoglossan penial styles rather than the penial afflictions of humans.
I’m pretty sure that Mr Jenkins would have thoroughly approved of the unusual subject-matter in Simon’s and my history projects. With Mr Jenkins’s consent, I researched the 7th century origins of Islam for my third year history project and the 19th century origins of the cinema as my ‘O’ Level history project.
As Simon put it oh so succinctly after our third thrashing in three warm up matches in preparation for our tournament:
Simon Barton: Better on syphilis than at tennis…
…which I think is a great tag line.
As I have also been bringing Jacobethan music and drama to the world of real tennis of late…
…I might similarly go for:
Ian Harris: Better on Jacobethan music and drama than at tennis.
…but Simon’s poxy tag line is more infectious than mine.
Anyway, all the above blurb is merely a maxi preamble to my mini match report on the 2026 Cattermull Cup from the Alleyn’s School team perspective.
No Sets Please, We’re Alleyn’s: The Tournament Itself, Middlesex University Real Tennis Court
We were properly prepared. Simon procured a brace of Alleyn’s School tennis shirts, which went down well with the organisers. My choice of team name did not go down quite so well.
I had imagined that the teams had alum-oriented team names and that some of them might be imaginative and witty. But it turned out that “Alleyn Old Folk” was the only team with a waggish name.
We found ourselves in a group comprising Clifton (multiple former winners), Harrow 2 (Harrow are also multiple former winners), Highgate & Alleyn Old Folk.
Let us not delve too deeply into exactly what happened in our round robin group. Suffice it to say that we were not humiliated in any of our matches – no bagels and no breadsticks. Harrow prevailed in our group, deservedly so, winning all three of its rubbers.
When I called Janie before setting off for home, we had the following conversation:
JANIE: How did you get on?
ME: Not too bad – we came fourth in our group.
JANIE: That’s amazing! How many teams were there in your group?
ME: Four.
JANIE: Ah, not quite so amazing then. But did you enjoy yourselves?
ME: Of course we did.
As always with real tennis, it was a convivial yet competitive afternoon with a great bunch of people, many of whom I know well from other matches and tournaments. It was a great learning experience for both of us. In Simon’s case, his first taste of such a match/tournament against lower handicappers. In my case, the challenge of trying to find tactics that would give us a chance to win some games in the sets, as once you are in the mix with games on the board, anything can happen in a one-set-to-six shoot-out.
And there’s always next year, by which time, hopefully, Simon will have a bit more experience under his belt and a better (hopefully uncapped) handicap to bring to the party.
I am imagining what Simon’s and my sports masters would have to say about all of this.
Good on you, chaps. Fine sporting effort for the school. Keep trying.
Colin Page (1926-2021)
Better luck next time.
Harris – would you please mark some matches for me on Tuesday?
I told you both that you were utterly useless at sport.
Barry Banson (1933-2025)
Epilogue: The Finals
Janie & I played our traditional game of lawn an hour earlier than usual in order to get to Middlesex in reasonable time. At least I manged to scrape one set this weekend…just.
We arrived as the losing Sherborne pair were departing, bemoaning their narrow fate in a tight semi against Rugby (6-2, 6-5). On taking up our viewing positions, I asked one of the victors, Charles Whitworth, to encapsulate the Sherborne match in a few words:
Adrian Warburton’s devilish bobble serve,
came the reply.
We had arrived early in the second set of the second semi-final: Norwich School v Harrow 2. The Norwich School team comprised Tim Edwards, whom Janie and I got to know when we were in Newport Rhode Island for the World Championship last year…
…and Reuben Ard, whose finest ever performance on a tennis court so far, in my opinion, was his “electric virginals” rendition of The Earl Of Salisbury Pavan at The Royal Tennis Court during the 2023 Gresham Society Visit performance I organised and referenced earlier in this piece. The video below, thanks to Janie, really is a charming and atmospheric Elizabethan musical interlude.
Norwich’s opponents were Harrow 2, Sebastien Maurin & James Charatan, who had proved 2-much for me and Simon Barton the previous day in our group.
Harrow 2 also proved to be too much for Norwich in a close run match (6-5, 6-4), despite Reuben Ard’s relentless pounding of the grille and tambour. At one point he achieved a hat-trick of grille winners, which I have only ever witnessed once before, when Alex Gibson pulled off such a stunt in the 2023 MCC Club Weekend C/D Groups Final. Unfortunately there is no video evidence of Reuben’s achievement, which was rather more muscular than Alex’s, whereas the last two of Alex’s three grille shots are captured here:
I have ever since called that achievement the “Coup De Gibson”. I briefly considered changing the name now to “Coup D’Ard”, but that sounds more like something emanating from the manosphere than a real tennis achievement, so we’ll stick with Coup De Gibson.
Both semi-finals were played between pairs with vastly differing handicaps and were won by the pair that was receiving a significant handicap. The final was very different – just a four point difference separated the two – (Harrow received half 15 from Rugby).
It looked on paper as though it was going to be a tight match, but when it came to the action on plaster and wood and stone rather than paper…
…it was an incredibly tight match. I think at least half of the games went to 40-40. Certainly the first handful of games in each of the first two sets did so. It was compelling viewing and it was impossible to tell which way the match would go until the last few minutes, when the Rugby team applied one or two new tricks which did just enough to confound the Harrow pair. (5-6, 6-3, 6-4).
It was an enjoyable watch in good company, as is real tennis’s way. Hopefully next year…or at least some year…I’ll be at The Cattermull Cup on finals day as a player rather than a spectator.
