The Final Curtain

"You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else"  

John Irving - The World According to Garp

We played at the Abbey Club for the final time on Monday, when Kenilworth C took on Solihull A. From January, we will be moving to the Holiday Inn across the road, so this match brought down the curtain on a thirteen-year period in our history. I'll leave it others to do the stats, but we've won multiple titles, cups and promotions from the confines of the small room at the Abbey Club, with its paper-thin partition between us and the snooker players. Various changes to the space meant that a new home was needed, but this venue will always be associated with the most successful period (to date!) in our history, and a lot of good nights - as well as a multitude of individual triumphs and disasters along the way.

While I am delighted by our move, I did feel a hint of nostalgia when I set everything up, but we were soon down to business against a very strong Solihull team. Unfortunately, we didn't give the Abbey Club the send off we had hoped for, but it wasn't for want of trying.

Dave Ireland was the first to finish on Board 1 against the super-strong Don Mason. Don showed me the game afterwards and it was really interesting, but Don just found the right tactic at the critical moment to put Solihull 1-0 up.

Rhys had a good game against Andrew McCumiskey on Board 2. I didn't see enough to judge this one, but it was incredibly complicated and unfortunately didn't go our way.

I played my worst game of the season against Ray Carpenter and was -7 at one point. Incredibly I found a tactical hit that swung things back to +2 to me and out of nowhere looked to be on the brink of a win with 2 rooks and knight against a queen and two extra pawns. Unfortunately, Ray's pawns were well advanced and connected and my co-ordination was very poor with my rooks on a8 and h8, my king in the middle of the board and my knight on the back-rank and short of squares. With very little time left, I didn't find the right plan and took the draw. Don showed us both afterwards how I could have untangled to win. On another night I would have seen it, but I was just a bit out of sorts, and I would have been delighted with a draw earlier in the evening. At least this got us on the board.

Tony Sadler rolled back the years on Board 4 against Dylan, with a nice exchange sacrifice, which seemed to leave Dylan's pieces awkwardly placed. Dylan fought till the bitter end and was the last to finish, but unfortunately he succumbed in the end. So 0.5 - 3.5 to Solihull.

Not the result we wanted, and our games after Christmas will be crucial. We still have a decent chance of staying up, if we can win against our relegation rivals in the months ahead. It's still all to play for. 

Here's to new beginnings in 2026.