Last week, between the 13th – 28th July the European Club Championships took place in Sofia, Bulgaria. The Championships was made up of the best 22 clubs in Europe, The Champions league of the Badminton scene. Badminton Wales Richard Vaughan representing Spanish Champions Seville Rinconada was hoping to improve upon last year’s bronze medal at the Moscow finals. Vaughan the director of the RVBA supported by Memory Lane Cakes and former world No7 and Double Olympian was aiming to win his second European Club Championships after his gold Medal with Paris in 2006.

Seville Rinconada started their challenge with group wins against Turkish team Egospor 5-2, Portuguese Team Santana 5-2, and the local Bulgarian Team Stara Zagora 7-0. That left them with a final group tie against tournament favourites Ramenskoe Moscow to decide the group winners.
In a very close encounter the match was tied at 3-3 with the final singles between Richard Vaughan and Russian No2 Iavanov. After Vaughan controlling most of the first set the 190cm tall Iavanov won some quick points closing the set 18-21. Vaughan again took control of the second set and was able to finish the game 21-12. In the final set Vaughan took a commanding lead at the break 11-4, and then extended it to 18-11. Yet again the tall Iavanov managed to win some quick points taking the game to 20-20 before Vaughan finally finished the match 22-20 and taking the tie, the group for Seville Rinconada. Mosocw finished second and went through as runners up.
At the quart final stage Seville Rinconada eased passed Dutch club Van Zijdervald 4-2, with Vaughan once again taking the critical singles match 21-11 21-11 against up and coming Dutch player Hans Van Os.
That left Seville in the semi final up against French Paris team whom Vaughan won the European club championships with in 2006 and a bronze in 2007. In yet another close match Paris edged the decisive mixed opening match and Vaughan went down to Indonesian Rasidi which gave Paris control of the close match winning 4-3. Another Bronze medal for Vaughan and Seville.
Moscow went on to beat Paris in the final 4-2 to take their first European Club Gold medal.
Vaughan commented “It has been a long few days with lots of matches and I think they finally took their toll today against Paris. All the team played 20% better against Moscow in the group but it was a tough ask to keep that up today and the same would have been needed in the final tomorrow. This is my last year at Seville so it’s disappointing not improving upon their previous bronze medals. I have had two good seasons playing for Seville and I hope they can win in the future.”
Next up for some RVBA players are the ‘White Nights’ Challenger event in Gatchina, Russia starting this Wednesday 1st July. The RVBA team is made up of Sarah Thomas, Rachel Thomas, Alistair Casey, and Richard Vaughan. The Russian event will be great preparation for the World Badminton Championships in India this August, in addition to being an important qualification event to represent Wales at the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games.
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