Shrewsbury A finished the 2014-15 league season with a flourish as a superb victory over a strong Wellington A side was coupled with a draw against the newly-crowned Champions (and still undefeated) Priorslee Lions A to mean Francis Best’s side finished with 7 points out of a possible 8 from the final four fixtures of the season.
In the penultimate fixture, Wellington fielded a team minus stalwart Toby Neal, although Shrewsbury was lacking Mark Smith. Reserves Ian Davies (for Shrewsbury) and John Lenton (for Wellington) battled each other to a standstill in a creditable draw for both sides, leaving the upper boards to battle it out. On board 1, Tiago Faustino for Wellington played his habitual Bird’s opening, transposing to a Stonewall Dutch reversed set up. After signalling his aggressive Kingside intentions with an early advance of the pawns in front of his own King, Tiago allowed an exchange of Queens, following the exchange of both light-squared Bishops, leaving him with a bad dark squared Bishop and an uncomfortable ending to defend. Meanwhile, on board 2, Daniel Lockett and Colin Roberts were throwing all but the kitchen sink at each other, to arrive at an apparently chaotic position for both sides (perhaps Daniel can provide the score and annotations to what looked like an exciting tussle).
David Everington and James Kuczynski were having a similarly intense battle on board 3, which looked as if it could go either way. Peter Kitchen and Colin Mace were battling things out in a Sicilian on board 4, with Peter pressing to advanced his Queenside pawns to promotion in a double Rook (each) and Pawn ending. Back on top board, Francis won the important a-pawn, significant mainly because it allowed Black an open file down which to penetrate the White position. A period of manoeuvring followed, with White forced to jettison another pawn and make further positional concessions. Finally, Francis’s b-pawn was enabled to advance towards promotion and Tiago had to lose further material, at which point he resigned.
On board 2, Daniel’s pieces were looming ominously around Colin’s King. Colin sought counterplay with an attack of his own but, despite a desperado Rook sacrifice, was unable to defend against Daniel’s checkmate leaving Shrewsbury two points ahead. On board 3, James managed to force a Pawn to promotion and, with two Queens on the rampage, managed to checkmate David’s King, leaving Colin defending a difficult ending and needing a win to level the match. Unusually, Peter was also slightly ahead on the clock. Shortly afterwards, Colin’s flag fell, resulting in a 3½-1½ victory for the home team.
Against Priorslee, who had wrapped up their first Division One title in nearly two decades only a short while ago, Francis was able to call upon regulars Dan Lockett and David Everington, with Ed Goodwin also available and Matt Best returning for his Easter holidays able to cover for the unavailable Peter Kitchen. This meant that Shrewsbury were in an almost certainly unique (very unique, one might say – except, of course, one cannot have degrees of uniqueness – Ed) position of having just 4 points separating the grading of the team’s 5 players in the latest grading list.
The first game to finish was on board 5, where Matt was facing Gary White. After Gary uncharacteristically castled Kingside (a surefire sign that Matt was playing a boring game), the position seemed about level before Gary’s Kingside/Centre suddenly just collapsed and Matt found himself up a Pawn. Although Gary returned to character with an aggressive piece sacrifice, it just fell short of creating enough counterplay and Matt was able to hold on and emerge a piece up to put the hosts ahead.
Next to finish was top board where Francis Best had taken substantial liberties against Adrian Zdanowski’s Queen’s Gambit and fallen badly behind on the clock in an effort to remedy his diabolical position. A cunning exchange sacrifice nearly pulled off the Houdini trick but a neat tactical finish obliterated the Shrewsbury player’s last hope to put the visitors 1-0 ahead. Shortly after, a draw was agreed on board two between William Bates and Ed. Although Ed had an extra Pawn or two at various stages throughout the ending, the presence of opposite-coloured Bishops lent itself to drawish tendencies if ever the four Rooks were removed from the equation.
On board four, the spoils were also shared between David and the in-form Steve Tarr (although to leave that prefix off any of Priorslee’s players is to do them a disservice after the outstanding season they have had) in a tricky position with a Queen, Rook and handful of Pawns apiece. David had earlier been a Pawn to the good, but it was a weak Pawn with a decidedly low life expectancy, and David elected to pursue more activity for his pieces, instead chasing Steve’s weak Pawns. However, as is always the way when Queens remain on an open board, Steve had counter-chances and David decided that to press too hard for the win may well end in the demise of his own King, and so the equal division of the point was decided a mutually agreeable outcome (you may well have picked up my distaste for repeating a phrase to describe the outcome of a game within one report!).
That meant that the whole outcome of the match hinged on the game on board 3 between Glyn Pugh and Dan, and what a game it was (cough cough nudge nudge please send the game over so we can publish it cough cough). Dan appeared to be in a decidedly tricky situation earlier on with his King marooned in the centre with virtually no protection and castling either side now ruled out of the equation, but by the time your roving reporter returned to the scene of the crime, the game had taken on a fascinating double-edged, erm, thing. Dan, who had earlier had two Pawns and Rook in return for two minor pieces, had lost all his Pawns while Glyn retained two on the a and b files, but Dan had grabbed a piece back in return. This meant he had just a King and a pair of Rooks against a King, Knight, Rook and two connected passed Pawns, not to mention having less than 90 seconds on his clock to Glyn’s 5 minutes. The key to this was the Pawns – if Glyn could shepherd them both to the sixth Rank and retain his Knight and the longevity of his King, it may well have been won for him. However, devious Dan had other ideas and was able to march his King over to the intrusive Pawns, hold them up and pick them up with his pieces while avoiding any nasty tricks with the Knight. Half a point apiece it was, and so the match finished level.