Another fantastic night at The Mals on Wednesday, saw our two Summer league teams in action as over 30 members attended together with another 8 visiting players from Fenton and Stafford.
The “A” team have been captained by Harry Gardiner who has led from the front and selected a team based on youth. Wednesday’s match against Fenton saw the opposition field a team with very little league experience as they took the opportunity to get newcomers used to league chess. The result was much as expected with our team running out 3-1 winners. Harry completed the campaign with a perfect 4/4 and has been on a tremendous run of form collecting 13 points from his last 15 games since 1st March. The “A” team finish the SCS with 6 pts from 5 matches, currently in 2nd place.
The “B” team have been captained by another of our younger members – Dave Lambton, who like Harry has had 100% success in the competition, also missed one of the matches to score 4/4. This final match against Stafford was expected to be closely fought and so it turned out. Mike Keenan got an early win for Crewe before the match was levelled by Stafford’s David Barker. Captain Dave had a very fortunate win in a cast-iron drawn endgame, opposite colour Bishops with R & P, before David Hulme added the final point for a 3-1 win. The team is currently top of the league with 7pts, and has to wait for Alsager (on 4pts) to play their two postponed games before knowing who will be 2022 champions.
With so many new members at the club, the match room only had 18 or 20 in there, with all of the other members moving to the lounge where they could continue to chat while receiving coaching led by Dave Price and other experienced members.