A record number of players have entered this weeken's Northumberland U19 International Junior Badminton Championships, which will take place at The Parks Leisure Centre in North Shields. A total of 111 top junior players from England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Sweden, and for the first time, Holland, will be travelling to North Shields to take part in this prestigious tournament, which has the likes of well known Englans internationals Gail Emms, Nathan Robertson, Donna Kellogg and Anthony Clark as past winners. The tournament is recognised as one of the top junior tournaments in England, and has been staged at The Parks for several years. Both the Chair and the Deputy Chair of North Tyneside Council, will be attending the weekend's events.

The action begins on Friday (19th) with the International Team Event, with teams from England, Scoland, Wales and a combined Sweden/England team playing against each other to see who can win this year's trophy, which last year went to one of the two Swedish teams, Play starts at 9.30 in the morning and should last until around 5pm.

The tournament starts at 9am on Saturday (20th) with the Boys' Singles event with England's top Under 19 player Toby Penty from Surrey as the top seed. Play will be continuous all day until around 10pm with Boys' and Girls' Singles and Doubles and finally early rounds of the Mixed Doubles events. Play will resume again at 9am on Sunday morning with the quarter-finals of the Mixed Doubles, followed by all semi-finals then Finals, with play expected to finish around 3.30pm. The standars of play will be exceptionally high. The highest number ever of local Northumberland Junior County players will be competing, with 10 members of the Newcastle Performance Centre taking part, including Newcastle's 13 year old Ira Banerjee, ranked number 1 in England in the U14 age group, and Daniel Conway, who is celebrating another bursary from the Sport Newcastle trustees.

Spectators are welcome at any time, and there is no charge for admission. Norma Waterfield, Northumberland Badminton Association's Secretary, who has been involved in helping to orgainse this tournament for many years, commented "It is wonderful to have such a huge entry for our tournament, given the current economic situation. Players are travelling from all over the UK, and we have some who actually competed in the recent Commonwealth Games. It is great to have some Swedish players yet again, and we hope that the Dutch girl will be thefirst of many Dutch players to compete in our event. We are all very busy preparing for an extremely busy weekend at The Parks!!"