The Boys are back in Town

Played at the Navigation last evening -

Marple 1              V     3C's 1      Mcr Lge Div One  03/12/2015

1 A Longson      0.5/0.5  A Horton
2 I Craft            0.5/0.5  D Abbas
3 S Hegarty          0-1     A Walton
4 G Trueman       0-1     A Lang
5  J Reed              1-0      M Tebelev
6  P Kirby            1-0       R McLean
7 A Hall              0.5/0.5  K Ye

                           3.5/3.5

Fortunately for Marple 3C's were at least four players short of their strongest line up.They were still formidable opposition though and to get anything from a match against them is always an achievement. As last week there was the slightly strange experience of two members of the team we were facing playing for us in a different league.
I haven't got time to write a full report and in any case as my game was the last but one to finish I only really have a superficial understanding of what happened. There were solid draws for Alex, Isaac and Alan. Sarah and myself both got ground down by very strong opponents. My game was amusing in that I literally made the move 30 time control with one second to spare. As is so often the case it was actually my 31st move that made defeat certain for me, although my position was already disadvantageous by that point. As played I was able to reach an opposite coloured Bishop ending two pawns down but my Bishop was such a poor piece there were no drawing chances at all.
There were good wins for Paul (in very quick time) and John on boards six and five. Johns victory secured the draw for us in the last game to finish and he played  lovely chess with his Knight dominating a restricted Bishop.Although his opponent kept finding ways to keep the game going he eventually resigned with both players down to the last few minutes.
So Marple became the first team to take anything off the 3 C's first team this season and  remain with a theoretical chance of being Champions. Thanks to all who played/ helped with setting up.