After the previous week’s full schedule of five matches, we embark on a quiet period for a fortnight. This week has seen the club involved in just two matches. Wednesday night was the Perry Trophy (U110) semi-final as Nigel Gardner’s “B” team narrowly beat Les Hall’s “A” team to make it through to the final where they will face Fenton, who have a very strong team in this competition and will mean Nigel’s team can adopt his favourite role as “underdogs”. Nigel’s full report on this match can be seen under his much more exciting “Nigel’s Match Reports” tab on the website.
The other match to take place this week saw Simon Layhe’s Buzzing Bees make the short trip to Holmes Chapel Rooks in a division 2 encounter. The B team went into the match unbeaten since November and having toppled league leaders Cheddleton B in their previous outing. The loss of top board Bart Fajfer due to illness meant the team could not be at full strength, but thanks to junior Amy Lovatt playing at short notice, the team was still able to comfortably outgrade the Rooks. Karl Lockett (board 2), Harry Gardiner (3) and Neville Layhe (5) all converted their grade advantages into maximum points. Captain Simon (on 4) was able to take a draw as the team won 3.5-1.5 to jump to top of the table for 24 hours before Chedd B won last night to go ahead of our Bees by virtue of having scored 23 board pts from 8 matches, compared to 22 board pts for Simon’s team. With two matches remaining it looks like the title will go to the wire and possibly decided by boards scored as any of the top 5 can still win the division.