| Grangemouth B | v | Stirling B | ||
|
Duncan Glassey Ian Mason Alasdair Sandham Crawford Welsh David Fowler |
1720 1620 1308 1351 1104 |
½ - ½ 0 - 1 0 - 1 0 - 1 0 - 1 |
1576 1488 1550 1456 1226 |
Bill Cook Brad Duthie Dave Hewitt Tony Pitson Gordon Allcock |
| ½ - 4½ |
Dave Hewitt writes:- Five very lively and interesting games, and it was by no means clear for much of the evening that things would go so heavily Stirling's way in the end. The first game to finish - by some distance - was very decisive, Gordon winning courtesy of a brutal K-side attack against David who was a late stand-in for Shug. Things then got more complicated, with my nice Q-side position against young Alasdair suddenly hitting choppy waters when he found a very clever B sac which immediately netted two pawns and threatened to force me to give back the piece and find myself a pawn or two down in an ending. I was anxious enough about this to offer a draw - with the other boards looking reasonable for Stirling by this stage - but the offer was declined. I then managed to wriggle out of having to return the piece, before reaching a position where Alasdair had to give up an exchange or - as actually happened as he missed the idea - be back-rank mated. Cue a sigh of relief from me - Alasdair is very promising and should take encouragement from this, rather than feeling too disappointed.
By this stage Tony was on top in a wild game where Crawford had clawed his way back in by active counterplay but it still wasn't enough and Tony emerged into a R+B vs R ending with pawns. Possibly game of the night however (although they were all good) was the board 2 encounter where Ian seemed to miss something in a very sharp position and Brad was eventually able to force off Rs which gave him a decisive passed pawn. That just left Duncan vs Bill on top board, where Bill was probably winning a strange R+P ending in which he had tripled b-pawns - but with the match won and the clocks ticking down towards a wild finish, Bill offered a draw which after some thought Duncan accepted.
From a Stirling captaincy point of view this was a pleasing result, as although we'd already won the division it had been courtesy of Grangemouth conceding the match at our place, so to win it "properly" felt like something of a priority. But there wasn't much between the two teams and the race for the runners-up slot - between Grangemouth B and Stirling C - will now be interesting. One quite striking stat about Stirling B's season is that in the eight matches played, only one board out of 40 was lost - in the away match at Badgers B.
Thanks to Dave for providing the game below, where he had Black against Alistair.
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