The Flying Friendship Cup

This is an international invitational club competition inaugurated with an airline theme (see Andrew Brown's history below). Some of the clubs, or their members, WSC particularly, now have somewhat tenous links to the original idea of the Cup but we continue to enjoy the friendships built up over many years and our newer members get the chance to carry on the tradition for the future.

The 2010 Flying Friendship Cup will be hosted by IcelandAir in Brussels on Saturday 5th June.  We will be sending 2 teams in each of the four weapons to fence for the FFC and there will be also be a number of individual fencers joining in from the participating clubs.  Please e-mail Peter Roberts if you would like to be in our teams, fence as an individual or just tag along for the trip.  WAGs & HABs are welcome!

For those driving the Google Earth/GPS coordinates for this are 50° 48’ 49.26” N, 4° 23’ 42.39” E.  Parking space is available in the Stadium and the surrounding streets offer easy parking.

The venue for the traditional Gala Dinner and prize-giving on Saturday evening and its cost has yet to be confirmed.  We are told it will probably not be in the Grand Square this time but it is still likely to be near central Brussels.  The fencing venue is about 30 minutes bus ride from the Place du Grand Sablon where we stayed last time the FFC was in Brussels and there are plenty of hotels, bars etc. in this area.

"This annual competition was initiated and arranged by BEA (the future British Airways) and ASADP in 1959, 50 years ago!, by a former club member Joe Garratt a British Airways senior manager and is a closely fought affair with a team of one fencer in each of the four disciplines. Wellesbourne was fortunate to have Joe, who had been fencing since his Navy days, join as a member some years ago when he was still at British Airways.

After he joined WSC Joe asked if we would like to come to the competition as he had no other BA fencers and for as long as I can remember Wellesbourne has been fencing as the British Airways team which is a bit strange but we like to carry on the tradition. (I did work at BEA in the 70's so feel OK about this)

So each year we fence in a different city against KLM, Iceland Air, Air France and Aeroport de Paris and although many of Joe's old friends have retired we have made many new friends over the years of traveling to Paris , Amsterdam and Brussels and we have hosted the event here in London on three occasions.

Joe was a great friend of mine and of the club as he served on the committee for several years and we miss him since his death in 2001."