With two weeks of the new year under our belts the club has seen all of our NSDCA League teams in action except for the “A” team.
In chronological order the new year kicked off with a division 5 double header at Meir. The F team won 4-0 and the E team won 3-1 with a wonderful full report under Nigel’s Match Reports. The C team hosted Cheddleton D in division 3 on Wednesday 8th and were victorious by the score of 3-1 thanks to wins by Rick Renegade and Harry Gardiner backed up by draws from Doug Barnett and Dave Price.
On Monday 13th the B team shared the spoils in a division 2 encounter with Fenton B to move up to 3rd in the table. Just 1 point separate the top 5 teams in this division. Captain Simon Layhe dropped himself to allow Rick Renegade to play (as Rick does not get many opportunities) who managed a superb result with a win on board 3 alongside Karl Lockett’s win. Karl is enjoying a rich vein of form this season with his only defeats being in division 1 against players graded 189 or higher !! Neville Layhe got the draw on board 5 to keep the B team in outside contention for the title.
On the same night the G team for players graded under 81, saw 6 of our members head off to Meir for a “top of the table clash” in division 6. Unbelievably both teams graded an identical 401 pts with a difference of no more than 5 grade pts on any board. A superb match followed as captain David Hulme reported on the LMS “A brilliant match finished on a knife-edge with great sportsmanship from Bob Perry. With one minute left on the clock for Crewe’s board 2, Bob allowed me to tell our player he could stop recording moves with the opponent having some 8 minutes left. Thanks to this the Crewe player had just enough time to get a draw by repitition and tilt the result in Crewe’s favour. With the highest grade difference betwen players of just 5 pts it was always going to be a close match.And thanks to Dave Price for providing additional transport that allowed Crewe to take 6 players to Meir.”
Special mention should be made for youngster Safwan Khan who played maturely to secure an excellent win on board 5 which made a huge difference in the final score as we edged home to victory with Reinhard’s dogged draw on board 2 after wins from Phil Wright on bd 1 and George Jellis on bd 4, who filled in at the last minute as Pawel was too ill to travel.
More details to follow on tonight’s draws for division 3 C team and Les Hall’s table toppers – the division 4 D team.