Cambridge City Chess Club - Bury League

2005-2006 Captains' Report

The Bury League looked like a one-horse race at Christmas, with Linton A already miles ahead of the competition. However Linton’s series of four draws at the finish allowed Bury Cannons A to clinch the title from them in the last match.

The Choristers finished third in the league, only just behind Bury Cannons A and Linton A. The Choristers must have been the team of the second half of the season, drawing 2 matches and winning 5. This was achieved by a terrific all-round team performance. Board 1 remained undefeated, whilst the overall season scores of Paul McMahon (7/9), Volker Thome (11½/14) and Richard Newman (9/13) testify to the whole team's results; all three finished in the top ten of 'Player of the Year' table with Volker just missing out on first position.

Meanwhile, there was just as much competition at the bottom end of the table with two teams getting relegated from the first division. Going into the last match, Cambridge Academicals had only won one match since Christmas (against Ely) and earned a hard-fought draw against Linton. But despite losing the other matches, we'd managed to earn enough points every round to stay in contention. We went into the last match needing to win against Bury Cannons B to stay up. Although none of our players had an outstanding season, we each managed to produce our best just when we needed to. An unbeaten 3-1 victory kept us up and sent Cannons B down instead!

Patrick Ribbands recalls: I think the Bollards were just pipped to the post by Academicals due to an unreasonably good performance by them in their final match! In our last match, we found ourselves up against Cannons A as they sought to overtake Linton to win the league. Cannons A needed a big win and unfortunately for us, they got it! The Bollards only managed a half point from the match although all the losses only happened in the last 5 minutes of the match. Good performances came from Mike Bradley and Matt Wells but both could only play 5 games. Tom Bramley had a notable second half of the season when he scored 4 from 6 on board 2.

Cambridge Dons started the year on the wrong foot by defaulting the first match of the season to Linton A. It was on January 3rd, so we were all still on holiday! Faced with the uphill struggle from last place in the table, we almost made it. An extra win in each of our last two games would have placed us 5th, rather than last. Although everyone was playing higher rated opponents, a particular highlight was Simon Doherty's score of 56% on board 1, for a rating performance of 176. Unfortunately it was not enough, and the Dons were relegated.

Cambridge Examiners won Division 2 by a convincing margin. I believe Chris Davison will qualify as the Division's player of the year, and his father Tim also had a high percentage score. Ashley Stewart played in almost all the matches and was always keen to face tough opponents.

For the latest league tables see the Bury League or Suffolk Chess websites.