Northumberland and Durham have selected a very strong team to represent it at the ASA's annual inter-county competition at Sheffield on Sunday when all of the 33 English counties and four teams from Scotland and two from Wales will be taking part, writes ERIC WILKINSON.

The Twin Counties will be trying to wrest the trophy it last won in 1997 back from its old enemy Yorkshire, who successfully defended it last year. The two teams from the North-East have dominated the event for the past 11 years.

The N and D team includes four national age group champions in Tara Johnson (Newburn) winner of three titles, Joanne Jackson (Richmond), Angela Winstanley-Smith (Sedgefield), Stephanie Proud (Chester-le-Street) and silver medallists Andrew Thirlwell (Newcastle) who is an an English Schools national champion, Chris Wilson (Wear Valley) and Natasha Crawley (Middlesbrough).

The Northumberland and Durham ASA is staging its first competitive swimming development conference at the Springs Leisure Club, Sunderland, on Saturday (8am to 5pm). Among the subjects will be an Olympic Games review when the speakers will be Brenda Bland (Hartlepool) the Great Britain Olympic assistant team manager and Ian Oliver, one of the team coaches and ex-coach to Susan Rolph.

However, the conference is mainly geared towards the changing face of age group swimming which affects every club, coach and official and many parents in the country. Some of the top speakers on the subject will be taking part in the conference.

Alice Sunderland (York) won a hat-trick of titles in the girls 10yrs 200m individual medley, 100m backstroke and butterfly and was runner-up in the 100m freestyle at the Yorkshire short course age group championships at Sheffield. Her club mates Robert Kinnell, 11, 100m breaststroke and Tom Southam, 14, 200m individual medley, also won.

Paul Hargreaves (Scarborough) scored a double success in the 11, 100m freestyle and 200m individual medley. His fellow club member Julie Owen was the gold medallist in the 14, 100m butterfly and Adam Wood (Thirsk) was first in the 11, 100m butterfly.