With captain Nigel Gardner away at Stafford with the E team, the F team played their final match of the division 5 season at home against Meir B on Wednesday. As always matches with Meir are played in a friendly and competitive spirit, and both teams weighed in a long way below the 400 point grade limit.
The first game to finish showed a typical sporting gesture from the visitors. With the board 4 game developing nicely, young Ben Harrison became quite ill and was unable to continue after about an hour. Martin Chadwick playing for Meir very generously agreed to a draw so that Ben could leave and head for home. Next to finish was the board 3 game, where Adam Fields had created a big advantage and put the hosts in the lead. On board 1 Kobus Nienaber was up against an equally graded opponent but managed to find a way to break through defences to ensure the F team had won the match. On board 2 Roger Coleman for Meir, overcame the grades to pick up the win for the visitors to conclude the match with a narrow 2.5-1.5 win for Crewe F.
The F team have amassed 17 pts from their 16 matches to finish the season in joint 4th place – a pleasantly unexpected reward for the team. The main focus of the team is to provide opportunity for our newest members to play league chess and in this context it has been a great success with nearly 50% of the clubs members playing for this team with a total of 13 players used.