The Senior Doubles pairings who will represent Team Ireland at the 2018 Worlds has been confirmed after last weekends Trials in Kingscourt.
Different from the singles, where the All-Ireland champion earned the spot on Team Ireland, a special Doubles Trials event was held as opposed to the All-Ireland Doubles champions earning their placings on Team Ireland. This is down to the fact that players are allowed to team up with players from outside their county when competing at the World Championships.
On paper both winning pairings looked strong, and that proved to be the case as both are also the reigning World Doubles Champions from the 2015 Worlds in Calgary.
Robbie McCarthy (Westmeath) & Diarmuid Nash (Clare) cruised into the Final with two dominant wins on Saturday. They faced Cork’s Tadgh Carroll & Ryan Harkin who defeated the #3 seeds Dublin in their opening, before surviving a tiebreak SF win over fellow Cork due Daniel Relihan & Michael Hedigan.
In the Final the Cork lads stormed out of the blocks, surging to a 8-0 lead. However they could not maintain this dominance as the experience and guile of McCarthy/Nash proved too much as they fought back to win 21-13, 21-3.
In the Ladies Final it was a showdown between the current All-Ireland champs versus the current World champs. Cork’s Catriona Casey & Aishling O’Keeffe recently won their 4th All-Ireland Doubles title, and took the early initiative in the opener before being pegged back 21-14 by Martina McMahon (Limerick) & Aisling Reilly (Antrim). The second game appeared to heading to a comfortable win for McMahon/Reilly when from nowhere Cork scored a quick run of points and held serve at 20-18 and got the crowd excited. However a few nervy exchanges later saw the scores level at 20-20 before McMahon sealed the win with a long range kill, 21-20.
The World Championships take place in Minnesota on August 9th – 19th,
Men’s Open Doubles Results
- QF1: Robbie McCarthy/Diarmuid Nash dft Ryan Mullan/Johnny Woods 21-5 & 21-2
- QF2: Dominick Lynch/Colin Crehan dft Darragh Daly/Sean Kerr 21-3 & 21-11
- QF3: Tadgh Carroll/Ryan Harkin dft Eoin Kennedy/Carl Browne 21-11, 21-18
- QF4: Michael Hedigan/Daniel Relihan dft Patrick Funchion/Peter Funchion 21-7, 18-21, 11-10
- SF1: Robbie McCarthy/Diarmuid Nash dft Dominick Lynch/Colin Crehan 21-6, 21-10
- SF2: Tadgh Carroll/Ryan Harkin dft Michael Hedigan/Daniel Relihan 21-19, 18-21, 11-7
- Final: Robbie McCarthy/Diarmuid Nash dft Tadgh Carroll/Ryan Harkin 21-13, 21-3
Ladies Open Doubles Results
- QF1: Aoife McCarthy/Leah Doyle dft Fiona Tully/Clodagh Nash 14-21, 21-15, 11-8
- SF1: Martina McMahon/Aishling Reilly dft Aoife McCarthy/Leah Doyle 21-9, 21-12
- SF2: Catriona Casey/Aisling O’Keeffe dft Pauline Gallagher/Ciara Mahon 21-11, 21-19
- Final: Martina McMahon/Aishling Reilly dft Catriona Casey/Aisling O’Keeffe 21-14, 21-20