spens cup
On 28 April, on a beautiful warm, sunny day we travelled to Grangemouth to play in the Spens Cup final. Our opponents were Glenrothes, a strong team who won the competition last year. We were outgraded by a significant margin on all six boards so we were firm second favourites to win the match.
Lanark had the black pieces on the odd numbered boards. The match started fairly quietly with all of the players getting out of the openings with reasonable positions and it went on to be a very hard fought match. In the Richardson Cup match being played at the same time as the Spens almost all the games had finished while almost all of ours were still being fought out.
On board one Ian had a fairly level middle game but then lost a pawn. Soon afterwards he sacrificed another pawn but, unfortunately, didn't get the play he had hoped for and his opponent went on to make his material advantage count. On board two Jim played very well to have a slight advantage in the endgame, but when the result of his game was no longer going to influence the result of the match he offered a draw, which was accepted. On board three Tom was on the defensive from an early stage and the game went into a Rook and pawn ending that was difficult for him, and his opponent eventually prevailed. On board four Ian's game was fairly level into the middle game. However, despite having two hours for forty moves both players were under some time pressure before move thirty and both made mistakes. Unfortunately for us Ian's were the more serious and he found himself two pawns down and with a lost game. Maurice had an eventful game. He was a piece up and had a strong attack but overlooked a winning move. A few moves later he was caught in what appeared to be a mating net but found a nice way out of it after which his opponent almost immediately blundered and resigned. On board six Brian, returning to chess and playing his first serious game in more than a dozen years, played very soundly and won comfortably.
The final result was a 3½ - 2½ win for Glenrothes; a little disappointing for Lanark but it was a very creditable performance, in terms of both the final score and the fight they made of all of the games against a very good team.
This year the team were very kindly sponsored by local company Systems IT (Scotland) Ltd who provided the team tops (see photograph below).
- LANARK
- Ian Brownlee
- Jim Smalls
- Tom Brown
- Ian McLachlan
- Maurice Benyon
- Brian Walls
- 0 - 1
- ½ - ½
- 0 - 1
- 0 - 1
- 1 - 0
- 1 - 0
- GLENROTHES
- Manuel Carballo
- George Pyrich
- Russell Kynoch
- Michael Spurr
- Thomas Lo
- Peter Selbie
The Team from left to right - Ian McLachlan, Ian Brownlee,
Maurice Benyon, Jim Smalls, Tom Brown, Brian Walls.