In the twilight of her career, multi-times county title winner Freda Linberry has been rewarded with an England trial.

Sussex officials nominated unbadged players Freda, Wendy Davies (both Field Place), Debbie Stavrou (Kingsway) and Aimee Truran (St Francis) for the trials.

Linberry and Truran have been selected for their first trials and 58-year-old Davies gets her second.

The trials will involve three games at Leamington Spa over the weekend of May 19-20.

Last summer Truran skipped the St Francis team which won the county fours championship and had a good run in the nationals. Aimee lost the Sussex singles final in 1999 to Freda after also losing in the 1998 final. Truran was Sussex champion of champions winner in 1999.

Linberry and Davies won the county fours in 1997 and 98 and the triples in 1995 and 96 and in 1996 Davies beat Aimee Truran in the two wood final although Truran was the county singles winner that year.

Back in 1994 Truran lost the singles final to Kingsway's Di Whittingham, who was an England player in 1994-95, but Whittingham declined to be nominated this year for a trial.

Five English indoor area competition secretaries have told the national association they will not do the job next season because of the extra work load put on them from the administrative headquarters.

Among them is Dave Woosnam who for several years has handled area 30 (Sussex) and enjoyed doing the work. He said: "If the E.I.B.A. revert to area secretaries just seeing their own area through to the final winners, then I shall be happy to continue, but not otherwise."

After several seasons as joint manager of the Preston club teams for all major events, Dave Woosnam and Alex Wright have retired. They are to be succeeded in a one-man-show management by Brian Miller who a year ago made Denton Island his first claim club for national competitions while still retaining his Preston membership. At Denton Brian is into the semi-finals of both the championship singles and the over-65s singles.