Coriolanus, Act 1 Scene 9.
But I've remembered now, and so here is the report of last Monday's final Leamington League Division 1 match of the season. Nothing of real importance was at stake, as we had wrapped up the title a couple of weeks back, but there was one last challenge - maintaining our unbeaten league record. And as our Coventry League team had lost its own unbeaten record - and the league title - in the very last game, we really needed to make sure that history did not repeat itself. It was all about pride.
In all our matches this season we have fielded the Three Ps plus AN Other, and this pattern held right to the end, as Messrs Page, Paterson and Pink were joined by the recently rediscovered Andy Baruch. Our opponents were Solihull A, led this year by Don Mason, who had run us mighty close in our earlier encounter and had a victory over Olton to their credit.
Things did not start well. I walked straight into some ferocious opening preparation from Don, and I was already losing/lost by move 10. I didn't expect to make it to move 20, so the fact that mate only arrived on move 34 must be considered something of a moral victory for me. Though, regrettably, moral victories do not count on the match scoreboard. Still, never mind, as Joshua had been winning easily against Paul Roper on Board 3 and looked likely to finish even before me. Wrong! He had reached a rook and pawn ending two pawns up and with 2 connected, passed kingside pawns, when he decided to jettison them to win White's last two queenside pawns. But this left him with just doubled b pawns of his own, and when Paul managed to get his king back to b1 the draw was inevitable.
So now things looked decidedly dodgy, since Andy B's position on Board 2 against Tony Sadler looked to have gone from very promising to totally lost. I took a look at the board and counted two White pieces and one White rook under attack - try saving all those at once! But somehow he scared Tony into not taking the material, and it ended up in a rook and 4 v rook and 4 ending. Tony was in desperate time trouble, though, and swapped off into a king and pawn ending that might just have held with very precise play, but his clock situation ruled that possibility out and Andy duly queened a pawn and won. His first victory for two years! (Though in fairness, in only his second game!)
Which left the other Andrew in play on Board 2 against Ray Carpenter. He seemed to be winning Black's bishop in a minor piece ending thanks to a passed d pawn, when Ray suddenly created mayhem to get a passed pawn of his own on the b file. For a moment I was in panic, as I thought this pawn couldn't be stopped, but Andrew kept his cool and moved his king away from the path of the pawn, so there were no tempo gaining checks en route to the queening square, and brought his knight back to stop the pawn. This was enough to win, as in order to cause the mayhem, Ray had had to give White another passed pawn on the a file, and his lone bishop couldn't prevent either this or the d pawn from queening.
So not only did we finish unbeaten, but we also finished victorious in the match, squeaking home by 2.5-1.5. Coupled with yet another Olton defeat (0.5-3.5 against Shirley A) the same night, this meant that our final winning margin was a massive 7 points. We dropped only two points all season, when drawing with our B team and Olton A, and ended up with a game point difference of +17. By any measures, this was a comprehensive success!
Massive kudos goes to Andrew, for a stunning performance on Board 2. I, on the other had, need to do considerably better! Joshua's impressive hit rate was slightly affected by him missing out on one game due to an opposition default. Lionel, Jude and Andy didn't do badly either, while Mike kept me company on 50%.
No particular reason for this week's song, though I don't think Poco have ever featured here before, and that omission needs to be remedied immediately!
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