First team win Division 1!
Crawford Macnab
11 March 2025
In our final league match we beat Wandering Dragons 4 - 2 to win the first division for the first time since 2018-19.
| Wandering Dragons 2 | Wandering Dragons 2 | Civil Service 1 | Civil Service 1 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ewan Taylor | 1849 | 0 - 1 | Matt Rounds | 1876 | ||
| 2 | Jim O`Neil | 1814 | 1 - 0 | Allan McDiarmid | 1750 | ||
| 3 | Richard J P Kynoch | 1791 | ½ - ½ | Crawford T Macnab | 1696 | ||
| 4 | Richard G Carter | 1704 | ½ - ½ | Euan McDiarmid | 1659 | ||
| 5 | Donald Heron | 1633 | 0 - 1 | Richard Scott | 1657 | ||
| 6 | Adam Walkowiak | 1502 | 0 - 1 | Eric P Smith | 1589 | ||
| 2 - 4 | |||||||
Both teams were relatively close on gradings so this was likely to be a close match.
Euan’s game finished first with both sides agreeing on a draw. White had castled queenside and Black (Euan) had not castled so it looked like it was set for a race to push against each others kings. Possibly it was considered too risky for either side to go for it?
Allan had a tough time of it against Jim O’Neils kings indian attack with lots of minor pieces advancing towards the black king. The KIA can be a tricky one to face and I think Allan had to sacrifice material to survive but the damage was already done.
Richards game looked level but I did not see how he managed to secure the win.
I managed to confuse myself by muddling up different lines against Richard Kynochs Scandinavian Defence. Despite this the position was balanced coming out of the opening until black allowed a queen and rook fork on the undefended d7 square. At the cost of weakening of the black squares (d4, e3, f2) I then trapped the white knight which had to sacrifice itself for one of the pawns around my king. Richard hung on tenaciously with threats of mate on g2, weaknesses on the black squares and a passed pawn advance to d3. In the end time caught up on me and Richard graciously accepted a draw offer where I would have struggled to repeat moves three times with 10 seconds left!
Matt was level for most of the game but it was one of those positions where two or three good moves led to a position where mate could not be stopped.
This left Eric to get a draw or win to secure the match which he duly did.
A great result that means we finish top of the league!