SIGHS could be heard all the way from North Yorkshire to Spain after Manchester misery befell Malton and Norton Golf Club.

For the second time in three years the Malton and Norton ladies had reached the United Kingdom finals of the Mail on Sunday Classic team competition - reputedly the biggest team competition in the world.

At stake for the top four of the eight teams taking part were places in the grand final at the Seve Ballesteros-designed Oliva Nova resort in Spain next month.

But Malton and Norton lucked out again, and this time in the most heart-breaking of finales.

Up against opponents from Falkirk GC staged at the Marriott Worsley Park complex near Manchester, Malton and Norton's quartet of Janet Rushworth, Pat Hague, Jackie Robinson and Judy Butler were deadlocked at 2-2.

Hague and Rushworth had won their respective singles matches, the latter staging the comeback of the day when she rallied from three down to win with a 15-foot putt on the 18th hole.

Tied at 2-2, the teams were forced into a sudden death play-off between the rival number fours and it was left to Butler, who had earlier been pipped in her singles along with Rushworth, to suffer the anguish of losing on the second extra play-off hole.

It was a hugely disappointing conclusion to a commendable campaign, said Malton and Norton's Curtis Cup international Emma Duggleby, who was among the 22-strong contingent from the ace North Yorkshire club attending the two-day final at Worsley Park.

Duggleby, who had featured in five of the club's eight matches en route to the final, had to sit out the clash against Falkirk because of a long-standing wrist injury which she aggravated earlier in the week, said: "Everyone was gutted. To think that something like 3,000 teams had originally entered the competition, for Malton and Norton to get to the last eight was tremendous.

"It's just a pity that the club fell at the final hurdle."

Duggleby herself has waved farewell to the 2003 season because of the injury to her left wrist, which has flared up to prematurely halt a year in which she won the ladies' English Amateur Strokeplay championship, as well as caddying in the recent Great Britain and Ireland Walker Cup conquest of America at North Yorkshire's Ganton GC.

"It's back to work now at Malton and Norton for the winter before preparing for next season," she said.

Updated: 09:19 Saturday, October 11, 2003