Man with Hat’s reputation is now in tatters, his job is hanging by a thread and his dreams of becoming BBC Sports Personality of the Year lie buried in the Wilmslow quick-sands. On an Autumnal evening at the Royal British Legion, Macclesfield C slumped to their second consecutive defeat of biblical proportions.
The KoolKat and I had been working tirelessly throughout the night to assemble 2 teams for trips to Fenton and Wilmslow respectively. I didn’t actually get up until after I had gone to bed.
Board 2, Man with Hat v Richard. 12 moves in and it’s a howler from MWH. I allow my opponent to step up pressure on the B1 – H7 diagonal whilst indirectly attacking my knight and directly attacking my bishop. Sometimes in chess you can make such a bad move that your opponent thinks you’re an idiot and subconsciously they might make lazy and implicitly weaker moves that give you a microscopic ray of hope. This wasn’t one of those occasions. Somewhat petulantly I play on until Tom arrives from Board 6 to fess up to his loss to Robin. Not being the first to lose means that I can now resign 0-2. Joachim is not far behind, his opponent Kevin has set his stall out and is waiting for Joachim to make an error, which he does. The white pieces fall like a bad turn at Jenga and Kevin puts Joachim out of his misery when he forces the ladies off the board. 0-3 and 3 boards to go. I almost miss this, Pete offers a Rook sacrifice to David B. Nope, I can’t see it and neither can anyone else as the ex- East Cheshire man gleefully snaffles the Rook and a resignation follows 0-4. Our Richard has a good position and is now a pawn up in a Rook and Pawn ending. However, with 7 minutes on the clock and no increments available he offers a draw and Mike readily accepts. Just Marc left and he has now run out of time and ideas against Colin and now his Knight is trapped. 5½ - ½ but no whitewash.
Heavily outgraded on the top 4, there were no individual scores that couldn’t be predicted but collectively a bad day at the office. A break from league chess for the C team and the next match will be a Presidents Cup tie providing a nice, relaxing sojourn in Marple before one fixture at Altrincham and then the Xmas break.
Congratulations to MC Colin and his Wilmslow team for a well-deserved win.
Thanks to all those who answered the call and a special thanks to Richard who played with less than 24 hours notice. I’m off to see my therapist whilst Mrs Hat mutters something like ‘For God’s sake it’s only a game’. She just doesn’t get it, does she?