|
The records keep on being
broken. This was their best season yet, which is
saying something. As with last year there was
just one defeat in 88 games and this time at the
entirely plausible hands of Jonathan Hawkins
playing White.
Roger Emerson will have been delighted
to recruit both Adams and McShane over the
season and to have played three English GMs on
the top three boards, as if to make a point
against the challengers from Manx Liberty, and to
have trounced Manx so comprehensively in their
first encounter.
Next year they will likely not
be able to call upon Hou Yifan but much more
than would seem to be needed for Manx to make up
the difference.
Everyone expected them to
challenge for the title; few expected them to
succeed. That came to pass but nonetheless, like
Cheddleton in previous years, they finished much
closer to third than to first. The gap between
them and Guildford seems wide, because as well
as needing to be close to full strength every
weekend (this year everything went pear shaped
when a sub standard team lost to White Rose)
they will also want to win their matches by
higher scores.
The best way to finish above
Guildford, they should surely be reflecting,
would be not to have win their individual match
and to be able to draw it on account of better
game points - as did Wood Green in 2005 and
2006.
For all of that, to finish second in their
first season is an achievement of sorts, even if
six 2600+ players were available at the end. It
should also be said that their players were
willing to conduct post mortems and to do what
they can to integrate into their new league.
This is going to sound like an
end of term report on the top teams in the
football premier league, but Cheddleton actually
impressed a lot too - ironically, more this year
than in the years when they finished second.
They were out of the running for first when they
lost to Manx in round five, but carried on and
only finished third behind Manx by one gamepoint,
after Manx lost to White Rose. This meant that
Cheddleton themselves beat all of White Rose,
Wood Green, and Guildford 2 for the first time
in the same season.
Had they managed to do that
in any of the recent previous years they would
have played a "real" title decider against
Guildford in the last round. They also managed
to win a game against Guildford 1 for the first
time in memory (see above) and handed Barbican 1
their heaviest defeat since they entered the
4NCL in 1996. It will be interesting too to see
what the English team selectors will make of the
marvellous form of Jonathan Hawkins - will they
feel pressure to diverge from the recent
practice of playing a regular top four in every
match?
Similarly you could expect White
Rose to achieve plaudits for their season; they
certainly could not have realistically finished
any higher. White Rose seem accustomed to not
getting the credit they think they deserve
though, and this may prove to be the case again
since their cause was undoubtedly aided by
catching Manx Liberty at the right moment; their
fourth place would could easily have been
seventh had they played Manx in the last weekend
- and they only played Manx at the right moment
because they finished fourth in their starting
pool.
James Adair remains their most enigmatic
player; he started the season with a loss with
White against Wood Green and was literally
absent for some weekends, but frighteningly
strong and seemingly closing in on the GM title
again towards the end of the season. They may
find life easier again next season when their
second team rejoins them at the same venues.
The most impressive team against
all the other non-title contenders: 3/4 against
White Rose, Wood Green, Barbican and Blackthorne,
albeit that they had the advantage of playing
the first three of these all on the final
weekend when they are traditionally at their
very best; and still they proved highly reliant
on winning board eight in every case. Board
eight is, after all, no problem for Guildford 2.
Their women players in the final weekend
included Antoaneta Stefanova (2464), Elizabeth
Paehtz (2456) and Sophie Milliet (2394). Yes,
just like all the other second teams, then.
Roger was delighted with Matthew Wadsworth
clinching the IM title in March, winning with
the Reti no less, and got to relive it all in
May when he - Matthew, that is - went on to
clinch his first GM norm, winning with the Reti
again. Roger sees his second team as a vehicle
for promoting young English players, and so this
success is not just a happy accident.
| |
 |
| |
The Dunworth
Trophy awarded
annually to
the winners of Division 1. |
Perhaps the only team in the top
eight to have real reason to disappointed with
their final standing. Loz Cooper recruited
Daniel Fernandez and Justin Tan over the summer,
to add to a squad already containing Ravi Haria,
Marcus Harvey and Adam C Taylor, who made his
final IM norm, and the title, this season, and
so it is a squad brimming with youthful talent.
In addition to Jon Speelman at the top, and the
ability to play a 2400 player on board eight
(because Jovanka is their woman player) they
certainly had enough to put up the toughest
fight against Guildford 1, and sixth would not
have been the pre-season target.
Mainly, it came about because
for the third year in a row, they messed up
against White Rose against whom they have now
lost the majority of their White games over the
last three encounters, an oddity which is
starting to look more than merely unfortunate.
But fourth was still possible had they just
drawn with Cheddleton in the last round, instead
of losing 3½-4½, and one cannot help noting that
Jon Speelman settled for a draw with David
Howell after apparently quite outplaying him
from one of his home-made systems with Black.
Something like that might happen again when
there is more at stake, Loz is bound also to
wonder.
Much the expected position from
Barbican (sixth in the last two years), who
finished behind exactly the same teams as last
year (plus Manx) and again ahead of everyone
else. Arguably some improvement could be
observed in their 6-2 demolition of White Rose,
definitely their best result of the last three
seasons and in the closeness of the match
against the full strength Guildford 2, but there
was some disappointment at the one-sided nature
of their battles against the top three teams. In
2012-13, 2014-15 and even in 2016-17, they would
give the closest or second closest fights to
Guildford, but in these days of continual
difficulty in fielding anything approaching
their best first team, their real fights are
seemingly now with the teams bigger than, but
closer to, their own size.
Finishing in the championship
pool is by definition a success for Blackthorne,
this being (I believe) only their fourth such
placing in the eleven years since the pool
system was introduced. Nowadays they seem less
susceptible to upsets than between 2011-14, and
although they suffered another at the start of
this season (against the promoted Celtic Tigers)
they had scope to bounce back, and took full
advantage of it. With seven "likely"
championship pool teams, it follows that one
pool was only going to have three such teams,
and Blackthorne found themselves in that pool -
and with the huge help that the five other teams
were all capable of beating each other, and did
so.
The Celtic challenge faded after
the second weekend, and Blackthorne Russianwere
able to qualify as the fourth team with a record
low score of 5/14 matchpoints, ahead of two
other teams purely on gamepoints. Their critical
result, a draw with Guildford 2 in round seven,
was, astonishingly, the only points - or point,
rather - dropped by any of the top seven teams
against any of the bottom nine throughout the
whole season.
|
