On Sunday 9th April, Essex hosted the 2017 Six Counties Championship, at Braintree Leisure Centre.

In contrast to previous years the winners were decided before the final session even began, however it was close for second place with any one of four teams in contention as the competition entered the last round of games.

Suffolk were off to a strong start, with their games against Beds and Essex completed they had only dropped 2 points. Two solid results against Beds and Herts saw Norfolk in second place on 16 points, 6 behind the leaders. Essex had recovered from a poor set set of results against Suffolk by dropping only 2 points against Cambridgeshire and sat in third on 11 points. Herts and Cambridgeshire were both on 9 points and Bedfordshire were on 5.

The middle 2 sessions of the day saw the top two teams playing one another with Suffolk picking up 8 of the 12 points on offer. That extended their lead over Norfolk to 10 points. Meanwhile Cambridgeshire took 10 points from Bedfordshire to move into third and were now only a point behind Norfolk. Hertfordshire finished up with 8 points against Essex which dropped the hosts down to fifth with Bedfordshire falling further behind.

Suffolk got the best of their encounter with Hertfordshire 8-4, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire each took 6 points from their games and Essex took 9 points off Bedfordshire. With those results and with a couple of games from the final set of matches played, Suffolk, despite losing thier first pair of games against Cambridgeshire, were already confirmed as the winners, however second place was still very much in play.

Suffolk were on 38 points, 9 clear of Cambridgeshire, Norfolk were just one behind on 28, Essex were on 26 and Herts had 25 points.

Bedfordshire finished by picking up 4 points against Herts, equalling their tally against Norfolk and totalling 14 for the day. The points that Herts lost in that final session meant that they finished fifth on 29 points.

Essex versus Norfolk finished up with 7 points going to Essex but it wasn't quite enough to lift them above Norfolk as both teams finished on 31 points but Norfolk had 23 shot advantage.

After a poor start Cambridgeshire finished strongly and were the only team to get the better of Suffolk on the day, taking 8 points off them and finishing on 33 points, but Suffolk, on 42 points took home the trophy for the third year in succession.

Despite wrapping up the title with a session to go and having a larger winnning margin than the year before, Suffolk's tally of points was lower than in 2016. They had been helped by the extremely close battle behind them which saw four teams seperated by only 4 points at the end of the day.

A copy of all the day's results can be downloaded here.