Matt Best’s wait for a first point (or two) as captain of Shrewsbury B was ended with a trip to fellow strugglers Priorslee Lions C – the only other team in the division without a point. The two sides both had identical league records going into the game – 0 match points and 5 game points.
The basement battle had been postponed by a week, as the visitors would have been able to field only two players. Indeed, Mark Smith was unavailable to play for the third game running despite the rearrangement. However, Best was fortunate enough to be able to call upon Ed Goodwin to stand in on top board, leaving the team still looking strong.
The match got off to a flyer when Ivor Salter won quickly inside half an hour after his opponent moved her Queen out too early at the expense of her King position which ultimately led to mate.
Things were looking promising on the other boards at this stage, as well. Ed looked to have a slight edge, whilst both Norman O’Connor on board three and Andrew Lewis on five had material advantages. The game on board four between Best and Mike Reynolds was the only one which Shrewsbury couldn’t really claim to have had an early advantage.
Things began to hot up though, with Alan Shaw having two pawns in exchange for Norman’s knight on three, and he pushed a menacing mass of 4 central pawns forward as the game progressed.
However, Shrewsbury were given some breathing space when John Tunks’ resistance on top board finally broke, allowing Ed to secure the victory and put them 2-0 up.
The final three games all finished within minutes of each other. Firstly, Andrew secured his third draw from three games against Simon O’Dell despite being a pawn up with the position appearing to be pretty deadlocked.
Then Norman finally made the breakthrough. Forced to give back the piece for two pawns in order to stop Shaw’s pawn mass, he was able to get his rooks through and engineer a winning position to mathematically secure the victory.
The final game to finish was on board four. Matt had managed to go into the ending two pawns up, but promptly proceeded to lose one back. Reynolds then sacrificed another pawn and a Knight to force his solitary remaining pawn through on the H-file, forcing Matt to give up his rook for it. However, it was still a won endgame for Black (Matt), as he had a bishop and three pawns (two of which were connected) against Mike’s lone rook and king as well as having a sizable time advantage.
All in all, a good evening’s work. A satisfying and crucial 4.5-0.5 win to lift the B team out of the relegation zone, with Ed winning on his debut and Matt, Norman and Ivor all securing their first B team wins of the season.
On the Monday prior (if you’ll pardon the pun) to that, Shrewsbury A lost 3.5-1.5 to Telepost A, leaving them 4 points off last season’s champions. Despite the hosts’ strengths lying on the top three boards, Shrewsbury scored an excellent 50% there despite being without Francis Best, thanks to Jamie Hopkins’ impressive draw with county number two Nigel Ferrington; and David Everington securing a third consecutive win with a hugely creditable win over Phillip Zabrocki.
However, Dan Lockett lost to Keith Tabner and Ian Davies, standing in, also lost to John Westhead despite both players looking as though they may have had better positions at one point.