Manchester in the NCCU

[Stephen Westmoreland]

Great to host you guys at the Stumble Inn again. Always a pleasure to meet (despite the result!).

[MartinCarpenter]

Well done That's a good Manchester team. It seems set quite fair for a very viable 4 way competition in the Open in future years.
(Also in the U2050, and whatever the other brackets are!).

[Alan Walton]

From that result yesterday; it looks like Manchester have qualified for the National stages

Yorkshire have to win to have any chance of qualifying; to catch our board points it will need to by 8-4 or greater victory, and this will put Northumberland out; 7.5-4.5 will still put Yorkshire through, any lower Yorkshire go out and Northumberland advance

[Mick Norris]

I'd agree with that Alan, with the proviso that we don't have anyone currently to captain any of the G Man teams in the National stages

[MartinCarpenter]

Is there any chance of all three teams getting let through to the K/O anyway? They're all very likely in the top 8.

[Mick Norris]

I'm not sure if that's really a good idea, or fair on the SCCU teams that don't qualify; as long as you have Union stages, and the Unions want to keep these, then I think you need to retain the possibility of teams being knocked out before reaching the Nationals

[MartinCarpenter]

Fair enough. It's been quite a while since the NCCU had that sort of 'threat' but it will help to make the competition feel real and meaningful.

Gently amusing that of the four Sheffield players to play in both this match and vs York, no one played on a lower board for the county team

[Nick Ivell]

Good to see Nigel Davies active again.

[Jon Underwood]

There do seem to be some titled players returning to county chess. I saw Kent were fielding an impressive side.

Our annual fixture against Cornwall featured John Nunn.

[MartinCarpenter]

Well Yorkshire got closer than we'd really been expecting in advance and did win - https://ecflms.org.uk/lms/node/135949

Not quite. Oh well, great to have a good competition. A much larger win in the U2050's.

I hope guppies proved a good venue for Manchester vs Cleveland

[Mick Norris]

G Man won, so I expect so

Amazing how close the Open table ended up

[MartinCarpenter]

G Man won, so I expect so

Amazing how close the Open table ended up

Its been a good venue for the Woodhouse. The Doplhin centre was genuinely excellent.

It was a pleasingly close event Very good to see GM turning up with good teams again.

I can never quite work out Yorkshire county chess. Massive strength in depth of course but it does seem much easier to get the players out to play each other than for county matches!

[Stephen Westmoreland]

Great to host Greater Manchester at Sheffield today. 6-6 for the u2050s and u1450s. Yorkshire won the u1650s 6.5 to 5.5.

Thanks to Damien and the team. Lovely to see you all again and back over at yours in a few weeks with the open team and u1850s.

[Mick Norris]

Amazingly close matches

The u1450 being the National Champions v the NCCU Champions was always likely to be close

[Stephen Westmoreland]

Strong team from the MCF. It was amazing watching and lots of drama. Yorkshire retained the Cup though.