County Championship Quarter-Final Weekend
This year all five Notts teams qualified as Midland Champions into the quarter-finals of the Counties Championship. Our Under 100 team thankfully received a bye into the semi-finals but that still meant that on May 21st we had to find sixty players to represent the county. Can I enlighten everyone to what that entailed? Firstly we needed to arrange venues assuming that none of our opponents wished to travel to Nottinghamshire although we were the home county in each case. We had two matches against Surrey so, fortunately, we made an early application to the Open University so were in there before other teams who were clamouring to play at the venue. Then we had a match against Hertfordshire – the OU is rather too close to them so a completely new venue at Northampton was found. Finally we had a match against Norfolk; originally we were down to share a venue with another county but they pulled out and so we had the venue, at Sawtry, available just for us. Once we had venues we started chasing up players – some already in place – others simply didn’t answer e-mails or prompts. Once we had somewhere between fifty and sixty all those players had to be fitted into cars to the various venues, we tried to fill the last places and, as usual, players started to drop out. This of course necessitates changing arrangements originally made and finding even more players. We then needed to ensure that there was equipment for each match, make sure we had refreshments, check everyone was ECF registered (they weren’t), get any ungraded players cleared by the ECF Controller to play and check the board order complies with the rules. Finally on Friday night everything was in place; Saturday morning someone e-mailed at 02.33 dropping out; more panicking and finally 60 players should be en route. Needless to say someone forgot! A £10 fine on its way to the NCA! Predictions- four teams through - exceptional; three teams through - excellent, two teams through - expected; one team through – disappointing; no teams through – disaster!
Notts Minor – 7 Norfolk Minor 9 Both teams were evenly matched with grades averaging 175. With the match score tied at 7-7, Notts needed 1½ points from the two remaining games involving Robert Richmond on Board 1 & Dave Flynn on Board 16. Robert, knowing a win was needed in his game, marched his king up the board and ended getting self mated; Dave in a losing rook and pawn ending might have garnered a half but both the clock and his position were against him. The Norfolk captain contacted me afterwards saying “it was a tight match yesterday played in great spirit by both teams, and went right to the wire” Full Results
Notts Under 160 7½- Surrey Under 160 8½ In this match Notts had a clear grading advantage over the lower boards but with no wins on Board 1-7 were unable to garner enough points in the lower order to win. Notts were always in the lead until 13 boards were declared and the score was tied at 6½-6½. William Atiomo’s Q & P ending always looked drawn whereas the two team captains had an imbalanced position where I had Q+4 v R, N+5. I’m sorry to say that I couldn’t see any way to progress this and instead of playing on offered a draw. This left Tim Lane (as in last year’s match at the same stage) shouldering the whole burden of the team. His position was clearly drawn (no good for us) so Tim went for broke and lost.Full Results
Notts Under 140 9½ - Hertfordshire Under 140 6½ This is the match where we defaulted a board and coupled with an early loss we were soon 2-0 down which then turned to 3-0; Hertfordshire’s last win of the match. Peter Gorecka-Marshall then turned the tide with Notts first victory and after that the wins and draws just kept on coming. Draws from Chris Budd and Phil Morgan saw Notts over the finish line to 8½ points and a couple of further draws from Alan Kenyon and Graham Neil completed the final score. Full Results
Notts Under 120 8 - Surrey Under 120 -4 Our efforts to find an extra board thanks to Bob Abrahart was rather wasted as we found Surrey had defaulted their Board 12. Their error was compounded after their 11th board arrived 1½ hours after the agreed start time, so he too was defaulted and Notts were 2-0 up. Margaret Gretton defeated the Surrey captain to make it 3-0 and after that it was comparative plain sailing as Notts moved to a 6-2 advantage and Andy Flint took a draw to see Notts over the line. Notts moved on to 8-3 with Surrey wining the last game to finish but by that time it was all too late for the SCCU team. Full Results
So an expected result – 2 teams out (but down to the last boards); two teams in.
Full scores are here:- http://www.oxfordfusion.com/oca/index.cfm?Org=4