Shrewsbury A’s unbeaten start to the season continued with a 4-1 victory over Church Stretton A. However, although the hosts were blessed with the addition of Phil Makepeace for a match as well as benefiting from Church Stretton being short a few players, the match was very tight and could have easily gone either way.
Things were looking rosy after David Everington (probably the strongest board 5 likely to be seen in Shropshire this season) beat James Carless after the latter dropped his Queen. Francis Best proceeded to add to the scoreline when he beat Graham Shepherd on board three. Best played a hyper-accelerated dragon and managed to get a dominant pair of central pawns which somewhat clogged up White’s position, and he was able to secure the victory.
From then on, however, things got slightly more tricky. Jamie Hopkins was down to the customary half an hour on board two in the clash of the captains against Steve Rooney with an inferior position to boot. He managed to improve the position somewhat and offered a draw, which Rooney turned down in light of the match situation.
On board 4, Peter Kitchen seemed to have run into a little spot of bother against Rooney the younger (Francis). Also a Sicilian Dragon (although this time not in its hyper-accelerated form), Kitchen (as White) had castled Queenside, inviting Rooney to throw forward his Queenside pawns in a menacing attack, resulting in a superior position for Francis as well as a comfortable time advantage.
Top board saw an entertaining encounter between Makepeace and the ever-dangerous Trevor Brotherton, recently buoyed by his victory in the Shropshire Rapidplay congress. Brotherton looked to have a fairly strong position, although it was very tight. The game will be shortly uploaded to the interesting games page, along with the tussle on board 4.
As clocks ticked down, all three games finished within a couple of minutes of each other. First, Hopkins managed to secure a draw on board two to mathematically guarantee at least a draw for Shrewsbury.
Then followed the critical point in the match.
Kitchen opted to sacrifice a Knight in order to open up Rooney’s king on board 4, but was unable to force a mating combination with Queen alone. He had to mobilise his other pieces, which enabled Rooney to begin to cast what appeared a formidable mating net.
In Francis’ last game, he was playing for Shrewsbury against Ludlow, and he managed to engineer a drawn position from a lost endgame, only to miss the critical move. This time out, he was playing against Shrewsbury, and managed to engineer a winning position. However, he missed the critical move which would have forced mate, and, in the position which ensued, Peter was able to swindle a fortuitous victory, not overly dissimilar to Matt Best’s for the A team in the first match of the season against Gary White.
In the final game to finish (by a matter of seconds), Makepiece and Brotherton agreed a draw, leaving the match 4-1 in favour of the hosts. Hardly a fair reflection of the night’s proceedings.
However, the drama was not contained to just the one game. The C team were hosting bottom of the table Newport C, bolstered by the addition of Jonathan Newey on top boards, whose impressive display the previous week against Ivor Salter had secured a win for Newport’s B team.
In the first match to finish, Eric Inglis and Sellick Davies agreed a quick draw on board three. The remaining games took a little longer to conclude. Firstly, Newey managed to beat Ian Davies, as he demonstrated the importance of pawn structure by going into the endgame a pawn down but with superior pawn structure – Davies had 4 pawn islands!
Andrew Lewis and William Gormely drew on board two, thus securing at least a point for the visitors. However, Tony Purser blew their hopes of both points when he secured a victory over Malcolm Price courtesy of Price’s unfortunate slip in the endgame which allowed Purser through.
Shrewsbury A 4-1 Church Stretton A
- P. Makepiece 0.5-0.5 T. Brotherton
- J. Hopkins 0.5-0.5 S. Rooney
- F. Best 1-0 G. Shepherd
- P. Kitchen 1-0 F. Rooney
- D. Everington 1-0 J. Carless
- I. Davies 0-1 J. Newey
- A. Lewis 0.5-0.5 W. Gormley
- E. Inglis 0.5-0.5 S. Davies
- T. Purser 1-0 M. Price