Two Become One

Played at the Navigation last evening -

Marple 1                  V      Stockport 2    :   Reyner Shield  :   19/11/2015

1 A Longson         1-0      M Taylor
2 M Fernandez     1-0      M Crowther
3 S Hegarty           1-0      A Coe
4 G Trueman       0.5/0.5  M Tunstall
5 J Reed                0-1      D Sheppard
6 P Kirby            0.5/0.5  D Pardoe
7 A Jenkins           1-0     M Jackson

                               5-2

I'm in severe zeitnot this morning so this will have to be a briefer report than I would like.
It's a testament to the strength in depth of Stockport that they are able to field what looks more like a first team than a second team for Manchester Federation matches. Here they had players of 160-170 strength virtually all the way down the scoresheet and I didn't expect anything other than a tough battle, which is what we got.
There were four good wins for Marple. Sarah and Michael both overpowered their opponents and won relatively quickly. Andy was making a welcome return to first team action and after winning the exchange was able to reach a completely won position. Alex played a very nice ending to defeat Mike Taylor , with his King marching all the way from g8 to g2 to secure the win
Things were much tougher on boards 4-6. I came up against a computer inspired plan on move 10 when Mike (Tunstall) played Qb6 in a position where you would normally expect Black to be playing for b5. I spent quite a bit of time searching for a refutation that wasn't there and then compounded the error by avoiding what looked and were drawish lines. Consequently I reached a position where I really couldn't see a plan at all and was very fortunate that Mike accepted my draw offer. It was never going to be easy the last time I beat Mike was, I think, in 1984.
Paul was unable to break down resilient defence from Dave Pardoe but when the draw was agreed it made certain we would win the match. John was unfortunate to come up against Dan Sheppard. Dan was always a strong player but having given up playing for a couple of years has returned and looks if anything to be playing even better. John did very well to conjure up what looked like a good attacking position  on the Kingside but ran into a very interesting pseudo-sac Bh6: concept that most players would never have seen. It was a shame for John who had played superbly at the weekend scoring 2/2 in the 4NCL.
As always thanks to all who played/drove, as soon as I am aware of who our next opponents are in this competition I'll let everyone know.