Our 1st team had an emphatic 4 – 1 win over already crowned league champions Mansfield 1 on Thursday to end the season in 2nd place, one point above our 2nd team.
It has been a tricky season for captain Florian as, for various unavoidable reasons, 1st team members have missed 21 of the 60 individual games, with at least 2 missing in 7 of the matches. He did well to ensure none of the 2nd team members became tied to the 1st team after playing on boards 2 & 3 8 times.
The season began disappointingly with an unexpected loss to our 2nd team and the team dropped 4 more points before Christmas. The 2nd half of the season was a bit better with 4 wins and two losses, one of them with a severely depleted squad (only Mike B was available) at Grand Master led WB 1.
Florian, Graeme & Steve scored 50% with John S only just behind. Mike B scored only 33% but, apart from a loss to 2400 rated GM Mark Hebden and two very surprising losses against a rapidly improving Uni 1 player, has performed reasonably well against opponents averaging 2165. It’s tough on board 1 in division 1.
The subs from our 2nd team have performed really well for our 1st team. Pete M, Mike N-E & Jan picked up an amazing 11.5 points from their 15 games, and Onos, Drag & John H scored 3 points from their 6 games.
Our 2nd team had a very good season, even challenging for the title for two thirds of the season. They lie 3rd after their 12 matches but can be overtaken on ‘goal difference’ if WB 1 win their remaining two matches. WB 1 were in relegation trouble before Christmas but then imported from Leicestershire a 2400 rated Grand Master and a 2170 rated player to help them storm up the table, leaving Newark 1 and Ashfield 1 to fight it out to avoid the drop (if Ashfield 1 go down, as seems likely, next season will be first since 1992-93 without Ashfield 1 in divsion 1).
Pete M and Mike N-E had a very good season on boards 1 & 2 with 12 points from 22 games. Jan and Drag also did well on the lower boards with 12.5 points from 18 games. Onos scored 3 from 10 games but hasn’t always had the results his play deserved. For example, he played extremely well v Jim Burnett (2100) before missing a hard to spot mating pattern and losing in time trouble.
Although our club has at least 10 players strong enough to play in division 1, to challenge for the title we need at least one more player rated 2100 or higher (Mansfield have 3 and before Lockdown Grantham also had 3) but we should have 5 players rated over 2000 next season, all of them living in Nottinghamshire, as Pete’s rating has risen from 1994 in September to 2027 and Mike N-E has finally been rewarded for his hard work with his rating rising over 100 points from 1943 in September to 2045!