Less than 24 hours after England beat France in the semi-final of rugby's World Cup, an Englishman added insult to injury by beating a player from France in another competition on Sunday - the World Conker Championships.

The championships are held annually on the second Sunday in October in the village of Ashton in central England.

On Sunday, English train driver Ady Hurrell won the World Conker Championships by defeating runner-up John Ingram, an antiques dealer based in Dordogne, France. "Hit it as hard as you can, that's my secret", Hurrell said, when asked how to win a conker contest.

It may seem like a simple game, but it does have its cheats and dangers, according to Chief Conker Umpire, Richard Howard: " We've had people that have brought, like a steel conker, painted out their pocket before now, or some that are filled with a substance that really hardens them, so we have to watch for that (and) obviously we have to watch for people who are playing unsafely, swinging it round all over the place."

Regardless of Saturday night's defeat to England in the Rugby World Cup in France, a French conker team did take enter the game with hopes of victory against the English, according to French contestant, Stephan Jolly, who said: "It was difficult last night for us, but today we really want to win".

Some of the French team did have divided loyalties though, like Beverly Dewar, who admitted she was English but French as well. " I have a bit of my heart in France," she said.

Of the more than 300 entrants in Ashton, 13 were listed as French, with others coming from as far away as the United States, Canada, the Ukraine and Brazil.
Since 1965, conker players from around the world have gathered on the village green to compete for the world title.

Each player has a conker hanging on its string. Players take turns at hitting their opponent's conker in an effort to destroy it. In Britain, conker is the name used for common horse-chestnut tree nuts. In America, they are known as chestnuts or buckeyes.

Thousands of people of all ages flocked to the village for the 43rd annual championships, which over the years have raised hundreds of millions of pounds for the blind.

The championships began in 1965 after a group of people in Ashton held a conker contest because the weather was too bad to go fishing.