Giles Velvick became the first player to successfully defend his Sussex PGU Mastercolour League title.

He was scraping home by a single point in the last fixture of the season.

The Horam Park pro and Sean Trussell, of Tilgate Forest, entered the Christmas Fare 18-hole foursomes at Royal Eastbourne level-pegging, both having accumulated 122 points since the contest started last February.

The scoring system of the Mastercolour awards points for each event on a sliding scale from 25 for the winner down to one for the 10th and the latter is just the spot Velvick managed with his amateur partner Jim Graham, from The Nevill.

In effect this was two competitions parcelled into one as the Christmas Fare was on Stableford scoring although much interest centred on the outcome of the Mastercolour.

Sean Trussell, partnered by Tilgate amateur Martin Copperwheat, had 35 points together in the Stableford but this was not good enough to earn a place for the pro in the top ten.

So Trussell, next year's SPGU captain, personally finished pointless and had to wait until Velvick arrived back in the clubhouse with his precious single point and 36 in the competition of the day.

Had he suffered a similar fate to Trussell then the pair would have tied and shared the £300 prize.

The day after retaining the title, Velvick turned up for work as usual at Horam but then complained of feeling under the weather and went home to bed with a sore throat.

He croaked: "We had not started too well but managed to pick-up a birdie, nett eagle, at the stroke index one long par four seventh and that got us going after having dropped a couple of points.

"It went on from there really and we didn't have any blobs and Jim, whose SPGU handicap is 11, was trying his best as he knew what was at stake for me."

With what sounded suspiciously like flu coming on, Velvick, 29, was not at his best. He carded a six over-par 76 and had no idea what Trussell and his partner had scored. The closeness of the call was in contrast to last year when Velvick won by a clear 10 points.

Winners of the Christmas Fare were the Piltdown pair, pro Jason Partridge and amateur Tim May with 39 points.

They took first prize on countback from Tim Spence (Battle) and Hilary Crowe (Copthorne). Paul Huggett, the Nevill pro, and amateur Wally Ball, were third on 38.

Sponsor Colin Taylor lashed-out on goodies for the top 68 finishers whose points ranged from 39 to 34 and the junketing was followed by a traditional Christmas dinner.