Thursday 16 January 2014

Battle Royal

We visited Telford C on 15 Jan knowing that whoever won would move to the top of the league.
Charles Micallef won on board one against Richard Szwajkun,who apparently helped by making a couple of weak moves.Francis Rooney on board 2 seemed to have the upper hand against Andy Jones and so it proved 2-0 up and both my game and Toms looked promising.However,in my case we got down to six pawns each and I ended up in a zugswang position.Then sadly Tom ran out of time leaving the match drawn,and the league table now has four teams joint top with eleven points.

Monday 13 January 2014

A good start to second half

A win against Shrewsbury A proved to be sweet revenge after their drubbing of us in this season's opening encounter. The return match at Shrewsbury saw us win 4.5-0.5 with four wins and a draw.

Shrewsbury were without one or two of their srongest team, but we were missing Michael as well. Early on we looked comfortable on most boards but there were no quick finishes. Graham, Francis and Eric finished within moments of each other and Graham tapped me on the shoulder and reported that we were 2.5 to 0.5 up. With my position looking good and Trevor steaming through the centre next to me, the win looked assured. We both managed to convert the wins to leave Shrewsbury a little shell-shocked.

All we need to do now is repeat the form, and the luck, in our next two matches against the other  top-three teams Telepost and Newport.

Shrewsbury A 1-4 Condover & Church Stretton A


F Best 0, T Brotherton 1;
D Everington 0, S Rooney 1;
P Kitchen 0, G Shepherd 1;
N O'Connor 0.5, E Elwell0.5;
M Smith 0, F Rooney 1.