Held at Sutton Grammar School Saturday and Sunday 31st August and 1st September
Our annual match was held in the London Borough of Sutton and we had the use of Sutton Grammar School - which has certainly produced International Masters in the past. We are very thankful to the Headmaster Mr Ironside and governors for allowing us the use of the school. We also owe a debt of gratitude to Pat Armstrong for all the hard work she has put in getting beds for our visitors, arranging refreshments, equipment and being on hand all weekend. Without people like Pat we could not run these events.
The only problem on the Saturday was the M25. English players and the Flemish Coach were held up but eventually we got underway about 30 minutes late. Unlike most previous years where the scores have been very close, the England team put on a sparkling performance to take the first round 14.5 - 5.5. The Flemish had to work hard to get a team owing to school term but the play of our top boards was very pleasing, The second round had a similar result with England winning 14-6 and therefor the match 28.5 - 11.5. The top 10 result was 11-9 to England but the bottom 10 was 17.5 - 2.5 showing our strength in depth. After the match the Flemings were taken away by their hosts and all seemed to go well overnight with many pleasant comments being made by both players and hosts. After a slight traffic delay the rapidplay started on Sunday morning - four rounds joint and a further two rounds English only. After three we had 4 players on 3 - Jonah Willow (england), Tamer Ismail (Flanders), Daniel Blyth and Alex West (Hosts). Tamer won to make him the highest scoring Flemish player whilst Jonah won to go in to the final two rounds in the lead. He held this lead by the simple expedient of winning his last two games and ending up with a perfect score. One point behind was Alex Golding who was too young to qualify for the team and won the "best host" award whilst worthy of mention were two other hosts James Golding and Max Elliott both 3rd= on 4.5. Hopefully they will soon gain the appropriate qualifications to join the squad. All final scores for the rapid play are on the results page.
De uitslagen van Arne Lambrecht en de andere spelers van Vlaanderen vind je op deze link : http://www.ncjs.co.uk/results.html