When the black dog calls

The penultimate weekend of the 4NCL was nominally the local one for Southern teams, based as it was in Wokefield Park, just outside Reading. Still, the journey took me the best part of three hours through cold and snow, and it would have been nice to know I wasn't getting an opponent on Saturday before pairings went up. Whilst recent form meant I could live with a day off, White on bottom board doesn't come around often at the moment! KJCA won easily, 6-1 once our opponents' penalty point was applied, but nevertheless we were in the relegation pool, and I was back in the team for Sunday's match against Barbican Youth.

When Downend folded at the end of last season, the plan had been for our remaining players to transfer en masse to Barbican - the team we'd given a reprieve from relegation, no less. But, whilst their manager eagerly snapped up the two 200s and the 180 junior, he wasn't interested in me at all. Apparently he thought I was too weak. Leaving aside my 205 performance last season and the fact that I would have made their team every single round so far, fair enough. But to contact all of our other players straight away and totally blank me? That's just spineless.

I was well up for this one then, and was still on board 8. They had to add a late substitute on board 2 owing to the weather, so the match card was close on balance: 210-203, 208-135, 183-200, 195-196, 182-191, 181-194, 186-181, 183-195. My testing run of Sunday opponents continued though, with black against WFM Kanwal Bhatia (195/2028). It was a scrappy game to say the least, which along with the historical baggage and the competitive importance made the outcome especially hard to take:

To rub salt into the wounds, the wannabe junior team beat the real junior team (I was our second-oldest player!), 3½-4½ the score of course - WWDLLLWL. We will need a solid showing over the final weekend then, but I've been here before...

This game makes a mockery of the 4NCL as the UK's premier club competition, for it has local evening league written all over it. A harmless opening choice only came to life because of my ridiculous lapse on move 11, and White missed an easy win just three moves later. Instead I was allowed to grab a pawn and start building an attack, was virtually winning by move 20, but then disintegrated in time trouble despite White's heroic efforts to let me back into the game. I was missing easy tactics, I couldn't manage the clock and I had no sense of danger. I hate losing too much at the best of times. To lose such a low-quality game which I was controlling and would have secured a priceless victory for myself and the team...?

As usual at this time of year, there wasn't much time to lick my wounds. A little over a week later, it was time for the CCF Superleague again, and more frustration.