The Essex Open was held during the weekend of the 3rd and 4th of September and marks the start of the new Fencing season; Great Yarmouth and Waveney Fencing Club was represented in the competition by its Chairman, Robert Johnson in the Men's Foil Event.
Johnson had a challenging time in his poule round, being drawn against some of the top fencers in the country; despite this he didn't have any whitewashes, gaining points against all of his opponents. After the poules he was ranked 75th.
His Direct Elimination match was against the 54th seed Thomas Parsons of Cyrano. The match started off well for Johnson, gaining a 3 point lead, however Parsons was soon able to catch up. From there the match progressed fairly evenly with the score being 10 - 8 to Parsons after the first round. During the break, Parsons coach gave him some advice which allowed him to defeat Johnson in the second round, with the final score being 15 - 10.
Johnson then placed 9th in the Plate round after being knocked out by Christopher Lennon after a closely fought direct elimination round which Johnson held the lead in for the majority of the time, but failed to fix his final hit, so Lennon took the victory 15 - 14.
