A World First! Possibly. Last night's Kenilworth A v Kenilworth B match must surely have been the first Leamington League match to have been recorded on video. And more than that, the first to have been made into a block buster of a feature film, with an all star cast. Unroll that red carpet and get ready for the World Premiere
But first, an explanation of why I was roving around the Abbey Club instead of sweating blood over the board as part of the match. Unfortunately Bernard C, who was due to be my opponent, was unable to play due to being unwell, and Bernard R, standing in as B Team Captain for the State-side Ben, could not find a fourth player at short notice. So I won by default, and the A team were 1 up as play started on the remaining 3 boards and the cameras started rolling.
The excitement is palpable, the tension clearly etched on the players' faces. The stakes are high. Failure is not an option when a town's pride and an individual's ego are on the line. The camera probes remorselessly, looking for signs of weakness and human frailty. Joshua's witty aside punctures the tension and momentarily eases the highly febrile atmosphere.
Well into the first hour and all three games remain tense. Jude has a slight edge against Mike on Board 1, but the gnarled veteran looks confident of holding. He has been here a thousand times, and faced down plenty of new gunslingers. Bernard is comfortable on Board 4 against Joshua "Mr 100%" Pink. Only on Board 3 do the B team look under pressure. Andrew P, on his belated seasonal debut, is turning the screw on Phil, grabbing space and forcing the Black pieces to poor squares. The Director goes walk about and after a brilliant long tracking shot (reminiscent of Hitchcock's 1948 masterpiece Rope) the camera finally pans onto two familiar faces. They seem transfixed by the drama and theatre of the struggle. (Oxford v Arsenal in the FA Cup on the TV.) What are they doing there? Have they no homes to go to? Are they harbingers of doom?
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