Central 2 Fighting On!
(by Kevin Argyle)
Two excellent results have given the second team a good chance of survival.
Last week we entertained unbeaten West Bridgford 3, already crowned champions, and almost beat them. Chris Budd was ‘staffed in’ but got the day wrong and so WB started with a default. Ironically this oversight may well have helped cost Chris’ own fourth team their Division 4 status.
We were able to put out a decently strong team and got off to a good start when Mark Radford beat an out-of-form Terry Lavelle, the latter just failing to make the time control in a lost position.
When Pat agreed a draw with Allan Brown we were guaranteed at least a vital point. Andy lost to WB captain Mike Hunter leaving Lukasz fighting a hopeless battle against Chris Fraser. The latter demonstrated how not to win R+K v K ending and just managed to win on time, both flags falling at around the same time but Chris claimed the win and Lukasz accepted. Our watching players protested but I agreed with Mike Hunter that the accepted result between the players should stand.
We travelled to The Willow Tree on Monday needing a victory to take things to the last game of the season). And win we did.
It was not our strongest team by any means with Mark Radford, Graham Gibson and Pat Allen all unable to play.
We ‘fielded’ a new player, John Harvey, who has been coming to the club a lot recently (we registered his details with the league earlier in the season) but has not played competitively since being a promising junior once upon a time.
Simon Parham registered a smooth win against Rob Garnet to put us in the driving seat but elsewhere, Lukasz was facing Chris Budd on board 1 and looking shaky, Andrew was losing to Chris Fraser, I went a piece down against Frank Hill and John went a piece down against Ed French.
Amazingly we won from this position. Although me and Andy both lost, Ed blundered badly against John, losing two rooks followed by resignation. Then Lukasz beat Chris on time, his opponent taking too long to make sure he had a winning endgame. 3-2 to us.
At the moment there are three going down instead of two, although this is not definite by any means.
Should be an interesting last game…