County Title for Javi - Jude, Rhys, Dhairya, Joshua and George also in the Money!

The KCC army was out in force at last weekend's Warwickshire Rapid and Blitz Championships in Coventry (Alan Higgs Centre) and made sure to bring home plenty of the loot on offer! The Blitz events kicked things off on Saturday (10 KCC participants), with the Rapid Championships (8 KCC participants) on Sunday.

Pride of place for the whole weekend has to go to Javi, who claimed the Warwickshire Blitz title just ahead of Jude on tie-break. They each scored 9/14 to share 2-4th place with Thomas Sygnowski, a full 4 points behind runaway winner IM Yichen Han, who was ineligible for the county title (but not the prize money!). Trailing in far behind were myself (6pts/9th place) and Bruce (5.5 pts/10th place) in a disappointingly small field of only 11 starters.

There were 2 KCC participants in the Major section, with Joshua on the podium in clear third place with 9/14, in a field of 15 starters. His cause was aided by a totally undeserved win over Ben, from a position a full piece down with no compensation. Ben finished in a tie for 8-11th on 6.5 pts and both our chaps ended up above their starting rank.

The Intermediate section saw 4 KCC entrants, and the accent was decidedly on youth. Dhairya was the star, coming clear second with an excellent 10/14 performance (15 players). Keatan scored 7.5 for a share of 5th/6th, followed by Lionel (tied 7-10th with 7 points) and George right behind on 6.5 pts (tied 11-13th). There was no official KCC representation in the Minor section, but congratulations have to go to Dhairya's dad, Sagar, who finished 10th =, well above his start rank. Can't think why Keatan's dad, Nash, wasn't also taking part!

Sunday's rapid tournaments saw many of the same faces in action, but Javi, Jude, Ben and Lionel were missing from the Blitz contingent while only David and Rhys joined the fray anew. Overall, though, numbers were much higher for the Rapid than the Blitz.

I took advantage of some rather friendly pairings to top the KCC entrants in the Open, with 4.5/7pts (4-6th), while David played much better opposition in scoring 4pts as he finished tied 7-9th. Joshua, unable to blag his way into the Major section for the Rapids, was a further half point behind (tied 10-12th) and Bruce's disappointing weekend saw him score 3 to tie for 13-17th place. The title of Warwickshire Rapid Champion was retained by John Pitcher, while Yichen Han comfortably completed a double success on the weekend.

Keatan flew the lone flag for KCC in the Major, and finished on 50% for a share of 7-14th place, but in the Intermediate section 3 of KCC's finest went into battle and we ended with 2 people on the podium. Star performer was Rhys, who came second alone with 5.5/7 - half a point behind the shock winner who had started as the absolute bottom seed! George followed half a point behind Rhys sharing 3/4th place but having cause to regret his loss on time from a superior position against the tournament winner, which stopped a good tournament from being an exceptional one. Dhairya couldn't quite repeat his prize winning performance of the day before, but still managed a highly respectable 4 points and a share of 8-11th place.

So 6 prize winners for KCC, including a county champion. All good omens for the rapidly approaching club season ahead. All in all this was a fun event, which I would strongly recommend - though maybe give the Blitz a miss if you are over the age of about 25! It will be far too quick and you will end up losing on time. And yes, I am speaking from bitter experience.

Javi receives the stunningly impressive Warwickshire Blitz trophy
from local chess supremo Alex Holowczak

2023 British Championships - Didn't We Do Well!

Having reluctantly come to the conclusion - eventually - that Joshua will not be continuing his series of reports from Leicester, I guess it has fallen to me to summarise the KCC results and mark our collective scorecard.

There were a few changes from the initial runners and riders I published just before the off, as some people opted to play in more or less tournaments than I expected (maybe I just miscounted?), but the most significant change was that Solomon has returned from the Wild West (Wells) and at least temporarily revived his KCC membership. He played a rather impressive 42 games at Leicester - and did rather well - so he certainly needs to be included in our stats!  This means that the revised count is that KCC players made 39 tournament entries between them (covering 21 different events) and played 281 games in total.

Well, no doubt you are all on tenterhooks to find out what our final performance numbers looked like. So, to put you out of your misery, I can revela that the overall KCC score amounted to 141.5 pts, and a 50.4% strike rate. This represents a major improvement on the 46.7% achieved at Warwick Uni in the 2015 Championships. And we played more than 100 additional games this time around.

While the standout individual performance has to be Jude's 5/9 in the British Championship, the highest overall KCC percentage results were:-

1 David    9/12 - 75.0% (2 events)
2 Billy    18/28 - 64.3% (4 events)
3 Jude    11/18 - 61.1% (2 events)

It bodes rather well for the future when David is the old man amongst our star performers! Of our 15 players, no fewer than 11 scored 50% or more. Congratulations to everyone who played and supported this event. I just hope it wasn't so well supported that it's going to be in Leicester again, any time soon!

And we certainly have to record the names of our two tournament winners, who have every reason to be extremely proud of their achievements. Solomon came 1st= in the Weekend U1750 event, with a score of 4.5/5. Not bad for the 34th ranked player. And just as impressive was David's score of 6/7 in the Second Rapidplay Open, which gave him clear first place ahead of Billy, who tied for second, just half a point behind. It was quite something to see the pairing Fellowes v Phillips on Board 1 in the final round of an open event at the British Championships!

This week's song is by way of a tribute to the brilliant Robbie Robertson, lead guitarist and main song writer for that all time great group The Band who passed away earlier this month. Although not as famous as The Weight, or The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, this is my favourite Band song, and this is an awesome live rendition with brilliant guitar solos from Robbie. Frightening and tragic to think that only Garth Hudson remains from these five superb musicians - the only group ever who have been good enough to get away with calling themselves The Band. RIP Robbie. Another rock and roll genius gone, but what a magnificent musical legacy he has left us.

National TV!

For those of you who missed it - and that could easily have included me, given the brutallu early broadcast time of o8.50 - here is incontrovertible proof that 2 KCC legends were live on  national TV this morning, talking about chess. And not just any old channel, but BBC1. You can't get any more mainstream national TV than that.

Jude, looking cool, calm and collected - despite being watched by several million people!

Paul telling the country what a great game chess is. But will the country listen? It should!

These photos were, literally, screen shots - the screen in question being our rather ancient and decidedly non-widescreen TV.

Great work by both our legends who came across as old hands at this sort of thing. Clearly the experience of getting into desperate time trouble means that handling pressure like this is a piece of cake. I can't come close to matching this sort of media exposure - the listening figures when I was interviewed in a Radio 3 documentary many years back probably struggled to reach 4 figures. And most of them were doubtless waiting for Bruckner's Second Symphony or whatever concert performance was due on next. (BTW I chose this musical work completely at random, only to discover it is called the Symphony of Pauses, which was possibly quite apt for my radio contribution!)

Anyway, guys, many congratulations on a massively confident and impressive performance - but please take on board the words from this week's song, and don't forget your old friends from before you were famous!

Its Official - KCC is (Slightly) Optimistic

Sorry to interrupt Joshua's "daily" reports from the British Championships (which seem to have run into the metaphorical buffers), but there's a Team Tournament involving KCC demanding attention.

Last Saturday, the Phil Holt Memorial Tournament took place at Tyseley WMC, remembering the recent tragic passing of Olton's top player, the widely known and formidable Phil Holt, as well as a number of other  Olton players. The event, unfortunately clashing with the final weekend of the British Championships, attracted ten three player, grade restricted, teams - all from the Birmingham area/league, except ourselves. The fixture clash, plus a strange outbreak of non-communication and non-cooperation, meant it was a struggle to raise our two teams, but with a judicious use of ringers it was finally mission accomplished, and KCC was able to support this worthy event to a level appropriate to the long competitive rivalry and friendship between ourselves and Olton.

Rather than call ourselves Kenilworth A and B, I decided we would participate under the titles of Optimists and Pessimists, mainly because I couldn't stand the idea of me being in Kenilworth B while Bernard was in Kenilworth A! The Optimists lined up with Andrew P on Board 1 (unrestricted grade); Bernard R on Board 2 (Under 1850) and Hector on Board 3 (Under 1650); while I led the Pessimists, with Rhys on Board 2 and John Conway, who we borrowed from Coventry for the day, on Board 3. Lined up against us were 3 teams from Olton; 2 from Halesowen and 1 each from Shirley, Mutual Circle and South Birmingham. The competition ran over 2 rounds at the Leamington League time limit of 80 mins + 10 seconds per move.

The first round was something of a disaster for both our teams, marginally edged by the Optimists who secured 1/3, thanks to Andrew's draw with Black against Alan Lloyd (Olton A) and Bernard's draw against Paul Evans (Halesowen A). Meanwhile, I was the only scorer for the well-named Pessimists though as I only managed to draw against Richard Reynolds (Olton C) despite being up a queen and pawn for just 2 minor pieces, I didn't have much to be proud of!

But then the KCC boys came roaring back with a big effort in Round 2, doubtless fortified by the free lunch, with both of our teams scoring a mightily impressive 2.5/3. For the Optimists, Andrew beat South Birmingham's Board 1, Kevin Hurney, and Hector won on Board 3 against Tom Evans of Olton A, while Bernard somehow hung on for a draw against Richard Liszewski (Olton C). For the Pessimists, guest player John led the way with a win against Tony Taylor of Halesowen A, while Rhys fought back from a difficult position to draw against Tim Lane of South Birmingham. But, in the biggest shock since Foinavon won the 1967 Grand National, the real sensation was that, at the 11th time of asking, I finally won against Alan Lloyd (Olton A) after managing just 5 draws and 5 losses previously.

Regrettably, our storming second half showings couldn't propel either of our teams onto the winner's podium, but at least it ensured that (a) everyone of our 6 players was on the scoreboard; (b) we could hold our heads up high amongst the Birmingham League big boys; and (c) that Optimism triumphed over Pessimism.

Final scores

1 = Halesowen B and South Birmingham 4/6

3= Kenilworth Optimists and Halesowen A 3.5/6

5= Kenilworth Pessimists, Olton A and Olton C 3/6

8= Mutual Circle and Shirley 2.5/6

10 Olton B 1/6

Only two players scored 2/2 and very fittingly one of them was Trevor Holt, Phil's dad, playing Board 2 for Olton A, who included Rhys amongst his victims. The other was South Birmingham's Board 3, Derek Green. Decency prevents me naming the two players who scored 0/2, but importantly ..... neither of them was from Kenilworth!

Many thanks to Rob and Richard Reynolds for organising this event, and for inviting us to be part of a memorable occasion. It was especially poignant for me, as Phil Holt was the person I have played the most games of competitive chess against - 16. Not quite in the Arkell v Hebden category, but hugely significant in my chess life. The awfully long list of Olton players who have recently died includes two others I had played against - Richard Smith and Rob Wallman - and three, Bill Yeomans, Ken Allen and ("old") Tom Evans that I hadn't, but whom several KCC members undoubtedly will have.  This has been a tragic couple of years for Olton and we can only hope they have an upturn in fortunes from now on.

Such events certainly make you think about your own mortality. There's only one song that comes to mind right now. No further words needed.

The 3rd of 7 consecutive wins

Update for Wednesday 26th July, as of 16:47. First I should apologise that these updates seem to focus only on my games - I seem to be the first person to finish each day so have no other results to report whilst I am writing. At least today Steph finished no longer after me (and also won) so it is looking like a positive day for Kenilworth might be in the offing.

The question arising from my game today is about queen sacrifices. My game featured a relatively pretty finish in the position below:

Now, obviously this (Qxg7, on the off chance anyone hasn't seen it) is a very unimpressive queen sacrifice. It is technically the best move (the only way to give mate in 2) but Bxg7 is mate in three, and many, many other things win (as you would expect, being a rook up with an attack). However, it did get me thinking that I'm not sure I've ever played a "necessary" queen sacrifice (that is, one where it is the only good move) and, given both how many games of chess I've played, and how much of my time I spend looking for fancy tactics, that does make me think they might be quite rare.

I feel I should also put in a special mention for Solomon's performance in the blitz event yesterday evening. After only scoring 2/9 in the first blitz event last week, he scored 5/9 this time, level with Bruce and only a point behind Jude (who, you will all be shocked to learn, was the top performing Kenilworth player). Given that Billy came second for Kenilworth, I think I might have had the no doubt entirely original thought that perhaps young people are quite good at fast chess.

The 2nd of 7 consecutive wins

Report for Tuesday 25th July, as of 16:27. Another win for my good self today, as per the title of this post. 8 moves before we were out of the Lichess "Masters database", and 9 before we were in an original game. Based on the comparison to the 8 moves from yesterday, I think that implies I know 12.5% more Latvian Gambit theory than I do Caro-Kann. I'm not sure what that says about me as a chess player, but I am sure they can only be good things

I have decided my new rule for this tournament is that if you beat a titled player you get your game published on this blog (actually, there is one extra criteria, which is that I need to notice the game, but let's pass over that swiftly). To that end, we have Ed's victory over WGM Sheila Jackson from yesterday. The full game is below, but the critical position to look at is after white's 21st move. White has sacrificed a piece, and there is one move here that completely wins for black (-5 according to the computer). See if you can find it (hint - it is not the move that Ed played in the game:

If anyone found Kh8, I think you are officially too good a player to be part of this club. For myself, even now I know that is the move, it is hard to convince myself it is the only move which is any good at all. Still, fortunately, after Ed's inaccuracy, his opponent swiftly went wrong again anyway, sacrificed another piece (even more unsoundly) and Ed was victorious.

Leicester question of the day - who is John Biggs? He has a sizeable statue in a fairly prominent place in the City Centre, but it contains absolutely no information as to why he merited such a monument. This presumably means that he is so well known it is unnecessary to provide any further details, but I'm fairly confident I have never heard of him:

The 1st of 7 consecutive wins

Report 2 from the British Championship in Leicester, as of 16:51 on Monday 24^th July. Does what it says on the tin really – a victory today, though many more needed for the tournament not to still end up as a disaster. I thought, to see how original (and no doubt sound) my play was, I would put the game into the opening database on Lichess, to say how long it took before we were out of known theory. The answer: after 4 of my moves (1. e4 c6 2. Nc3 d5 3. Qf3 Nf6 4.Bd3) we were out of the Lichess “Masters database” and after 8 moves it appears to be a game that has never been played before.

Second, we will have a quick look at the critical position below. Which move in this slightly strange structure wins for white basically at once?

 If you answered Nxd5, you are a better chess player than me. I played f5 gxf5 and only then Nxd5, which is a good deal fancier but sadly not as good a move. Still, one of the advantages of being at the bottom of the table is playing against people who are also out of form, so my opponent duly managed to misplay the position quite soon afterwards, and I was able to win. Not very impressive, but why waste your best chess at the start of a 7 game winning streak.

Since I finished early, I don’t have that much other news to report. Ben was in far too chipper a mood for someone who has played this many games of chess recently, Nigel gave what looked like a very convincing checkmate down the h file, and Solomon’s return to the area was marked by his opponent not bothering to turn up, meaning he had an even earlier finish than I did.

Leicester fact of the day – it has the largest Shopmobility and mobility aid shop in the UK. First review on Google for the establishment: “"The best day I have had in LEICESTER for 5 or more years now." I really hope that person hasn’t visited Leicester all that many times in the last 5 years, or it does not bode well for what I’m going to be able to find on the rest of my days there.

British championship report (part 1)

Since Mark did mention it in his message, I feel I should bring at least some news from the event. The number of posts you get is entirely dependent on the quality of the Wi-Fi on the Leicester-Nuneaton railway, so I’m guessing there won’t be all that many.

Kenilworth players update so far, as of 18:03 on Sunday 23^rd (assuming Marks original list is correct):

• Ben: 8.5/21
• Billy: 7/12
• Dhairya: 4/9
• Jude: 0/1
• Joshua: 0/2 (but will be 7/9 obviously)
• Nigel: 2/5
• Keatan: 0/0
• Bruce: 0/0
• George: 0/0
• Steph: 0/0
• David: 3/5
• Ed: 0/0
• Rhys: 3.5/7
• Lionel: 4/7

That makes a grand total of 32/69 so far, for 46.4% (assuming you can trust my train mathematics). Some room for improvement there I would say.

I can tell you very little about the quality of the games outside of my own, as the event is being played across a number of different rooms, and my tournament appears to have been shoved into a corner all by itself, so I basically can’t see any of the other tournaments that are going on. On day 1 the doors were all closed so you couldn’t easily access the other rooms, and on day 2 as I went to look in the other rooms a Kenilworth player (who to maintain some anonymity I will call by a pseudonym of Mark P Horseman) informed me that I shouldn’t be in the room with the good championship players, and sent me back off to my corner again. Hopefully once more events start on Monday I won’t feel quite so alone.

I can tell you very succinctly about the quality of the games that I have played – poor to abysmal. Two well deserved defeats to players rated lower than, but clearly much better than, myself, so we will have to cope that 7/9 will be enough to quality me for the big boys room next year (as obviously I’m definitely going to win my next 7 games, given this start). I think it might be time for a King’s gambit tomorrow – it really is that bad.

The event is being played at de Montford University, which those of you who had an extremely eccentric choice of subject matter at GCSE history will know, is named after Simon de Montford, who was basically the Oliver Cromwell equivalent in what really should be called the first English Civil War, but seems to have been inexplicably expunged from most accounts of British history.

With that in mind, I was aiming to come up with some metaphor related to that time about a Kenilworth nobleman coming to conquer Leicester. Unfortunately, the Earl of Warwick (about the closest person of any consequence) appears to have been comprehensively defeated by de Montford, and Warwick Castle captured, so perhaps the quality of my play is historically accurate after all. If anyone with better historical knowledge than me can come up with a more positive link, please do let me know and I shall steal it for future messages.

I think we can all agree these reports need something more upmarket that Mark’s usual popular songs, so instead I bring you the museum of the day from my cultural trip around Leicester. Official KCC museum review – average (but much better than the chess so far, from my perspective):

Good Luck in Leicester!

By my admittedly dodgy reckoning, over the coming week and a bit 14 KCC members are due to play in  the 2023 British Championships in Leicester. In fact, much to my surprise, the event already kicked off last night with the first rapidplay events, in which KCC had two representatives. Ben was first on the scoreboard with a first round win, but by the end Dhairya had overtaken him to finish on 4/9, with Ben close behind on 3.5 and both our guys gaining rating points.

More action is underway as I write this (Friday afternoon), with the first of 3 Rapidplay events. In the Open section, Ben is again in action, joined this time by Billy, while Rhys and Lionel are in the U1750. This section witnessed the first KCC v KCC battle with an honours even first round draw.

Jude is headlining our challenge, playing in the British Championship proper, where he finds himself seeded 47th. There may only be 5 GMs this year, but its still rather strong! Unless there are some late additions to, or defections from, the entries, t looks like he will be playing one of the Kanyamarala siblings from Ireland in Round 1 - who have identical ratings at 2344. But then again, he may play someone else entirely, as my understanding of swiss-system pairings is rather sketchy! Other participants in Championship events are Bruce B in the 50+ seniors; Ed in the 65+ seniors; Keatan in the U16; and Dhairya in the U12. Other KCC members in action are Joshua, Steph, George, Nigel and (the soon to be returning, we hope!) David.

Now, I have just checked back to a post on this Blog made by Joshua on August 8th 2015 (some of us have long memories!) where he summarised the performance of the KCC players the last time the British Championships were held in the Midlands - though Warwick University was much more convenient than De Montfort University is. There, KCC players managed a total of 121 games, scoring 56.5 pts (46.7%). We performed better in standardplay games, where we scored 28.5/55 - 51.8%. Sadly he does not list all the KCC participants, but I at least recall that Paul and I played in the Championship (and Andrew P who signed up for KCC during that very tournament), Bernard C and Mike in the Seniors, and Josh in the Major Open and just about every other tournament he could - some 43 games in total!  Well, I can report that both cumulative and individual totals will be beaten over the next week!

• Ben - 44 games (6 events)
• Billy - 37 games (5 events)
• Dhairya - 23 games ( events)
• Jude - 18 games (2 events)
• Joshua - 18 games (2 events) - not a very spirited defence of his title!
• Nigel - 17 games (3 events)
• Keatan - 16 games (2 events)
• Bruce B - 16 games (2 events)
• George - 16 games (2 events)
• Steph - 12 games (2 events)
• David - 12 games (2 events)
• Ed - 7 games (1 event)
• Rhys - 7 games (1 event)
• Lionel - 7 games (1 event)

(Apologies if I've missed anyone out, or missed an event here or there. I'm not perfect, you know!)

I almost added in our lock-down on-line member Solomon, who could have contributed another 30 games and 4 events to our total, but even I could see this would be pushing things a bit far!

Interestingly, in  our total of 250 games, the KCC participants will be playing considerably more speed chess than standardplay games:-

• Standard - 90 games
• Rapid - 90 games
• Blitz - 70 games

So whereas standardplay games accounted for 45.5% of the KCC activity in 2015, in 2023 it will be only 36%.  A sign of our younger demographic, I suspect!

And as I finish up, I see that Billy has just beaten the 2097 rated Stephen Ledger (brother of IM Andrew) in Rd 4 of the 1st Rapidplay Open and in Round 5 finds himself on Board 4 with 3/4! Lets hope for many more ratings upsets like these in the next 10 days!

Good luck to all KCC members playing in Leicester, and I look forward to seeing most of you at one time or another during my 3 planned spectating visits. 

BTW - In 2015, Joshua set himself the task of posting a report on each day of the event, a feat he repeated (nearly!) in Torquay in 2019. Given he will be spending hours everyday travelling on and waiting for trains (strike days excepted, I guess), I'm hoping he will be doing the same again to keep us all up to date with the action.

From the Archives - Part 17 - Odds and Sods

Well, even by my standards there has been a rather long interval since Part 16 of this KCC history. 27 months, in fact, for which I would like to apologise. Though I doubt that anyone has been waiting on tenterhooks for a resumption of this narrative.  If you can remember back as far as the last instalment, you will recall that the series of articles had initially finished with Part 15, which covered the events of 2006. But then Mike Johnson suddenly came forward with a new heap of papers which enabled me to fill in some of the gaps in the records I had previously inherited. So Part 16 backtracked to cover the years 2000 and 2001, and now Part 17 takes us on to 2003-05

May 2003 - The 2003 AGM was actually well covered in Part 12 of this series (19.09.19) but now the accounts have come to hand. Income from membership subs (£10 adults; £5 associates; £4 juniors) amounted to £230, which was quite a tidy sum back then, while expenditure was only some £136 pounds, giving us a surplus on the year of £94.68. This took our accumulated funds to £284.79, which put is in a good position to cope with unforeseen events such as a pandemic; energy and fuel inflation; or Brexit. Clearly the Club was in very far-sighted hands in those days. I'm not sure why, but our LDCL League Membership fees were a whopping £102, whereas now - even with 5 teams next season - we will only be paying £57. Almost certainly this was tied up with extra payments to the ECF (though it may have still been the BCF then) which have now been subsumed within the individual ECF membership fee.

August 2003 - A letter from the Secretary (Bernard) dated August 14 informs the members that a Team Formation meeting will be held at the Sports and Social Club on August 28th. Additionally, the club will be presented that night with the BCF Small Club of the Year award. Bernard also takes the opportunity to announce that the Club internal tournaments have finally been resolved, with victories for Adam Sykes (over Bernard) in the Tilley Cup and for Carl Pickering (over Rod Webb) in the Plate. And we learn that summer attendances have been "excellent - at least 8 on most nights".

20 people turn out for the Team Formation/BCF Award night, though disappointingly the Club Secretary is a notable absentee. But at least he apologises for his absence. As does - oh no! - the BCF representative due to make the Club of the Year presentation. What a disappointment. This will have to be rescheduled. (David Anderton did subsequently attend a club night before Christmas to make this award.) But at least our teams are sorted out:-

A team - Paul L, Bernard, Paul Mills and Carl (captain)

B team - Phil, Mark L, Adam Sykes, Rod (captain) and Tom Swallow as reserve

C team - Roy, Nick Mottram and Nigel Morris (captain)

D team - Chris, Geoff King, Tony King, Mike Whatson (captain) and Simon Whatson as reserve

E team - Tom Payne, Aaron Payne, Steve Payne, Bruce Holland and Frank Holmes (captain)

May 2004 - Another AGM that has been extensively reported already (Part 13 - 11.10.19), but - once again - the Accounts have now come to light. These show income down by about £40 and expenditure up by a similar amount, so the annual surplus was a measly £15.91. This was mainly due to a steep rise in LDCL fees to £136. Still, our accumulated balance continues to grow and now stands at £300.70.

March 2005 -  An interesting letter from Bernard (as Secretary) dated March 31, giving notice of the forthcoming AGM. No, that's not the interesting bit, this is. He informs us, firstly, that the Club will host the U-125 Cup Final between Nuneaton and Stratford on April 21, and then issues an appeal for members to volunteer to serve on the LDCL Committee. "At present, only 4 clubs are represented on the Committee being Stratford, Banbury, Olton and Solihull. As the largest club within the League, the Committee has requested that Kenilworth have at least one representative and I really think that we should honour this commitment." Wow! Who knew we were ever the largest club within the League?? This is complete news to me, and a major surprise, considering we are the smallest community to have a team in the League!

May 2005 - A club membership list comes to light. We have an impressive 20 full members; 1 associate and 5 juniors. Plus 3 naughty people (Adam Sykes; Aaron Payne and Simon Whatson) who didn't cough up their subs! The full members are:- Bruce Holland; Chris Aldridge; Nick Mottram; Phil Wood; Rod Webb; Roy Watson; Mike Whatson; Tom Swallow; Tony King; Bernard Rogers; Geoff King; Nigel Morris;Frank Holmes; Steve Payne; Paul Mills; Carl Pickering; Nick Waterman; Len Krombeen, Calvin Smith; and the mysterious Dr ??????, who gave his £10 to Carl! john skinner was the only associate member and our junior squad was Paul and Mark Lam; Tom Payne; Michael Atkins and Daniel Parvis.

I know I am starting to sound like a record that has got stuck, but the 2005 AGM has also previously been recorded at length (Part 14 - 18.12.19) though again without any financial details. Until now! These show another rise in LDCL fees, which have now reached the stratosphere - £168! Luckily, the Treasurer must have applied the thumbscrews as he has somehow raked in £225 in subs, but with £62.88 spent on equipment, and £40 of subsidies for our juniors' BCF membership, we posted a loss on the year of £34.65, which reduced our accumulated funds to £266.05.

I think I'll call it a day for now - if you think its a pain reading this stuff, spare a thought for me having to type it all out! There's enough material left over for at least one more instalment of this series, so the suffering - for all of us - is not over yet. There will be a Part 18 of this series - don't think it won't happen, just because it hasn't happened yet. Which just happens to be a line from our latest song!