The WDCL league season came to a close recently as such we can take a look back at the past year.
The A team performed solidly in division one finishing in 2nd place overall. In our key games against league winners Atherton we were edged out by a single point on both occasions. Our only other loss came in the A team V B team fixture towards the end of the year in which we spread our strength (with the title at that point already having been decided) in order to give everyone present a competitive game.
The B team in the end survived to fight another season in Division 1, they got off to a rocky start and for a fair bit of the year were glued to the bottom of the table. In the end relegation was to boil down to the final match which was to be played v Northwich to decide upon who would be relegated. Rather anticlimactically Northwich were unable to raise a team for this fixture and were therefore relegated.
Mike Selway led the “4th” team in the Richard Furness league to 2nd place. Mike fittingly ended the season with a fine individual win against a 1600 rated player.
Nick Cooke’s “3rd” team in the same division finished further down the table despite ending the year on a high note with a match win against Winwick.
As for the Cup’s Andy Coe led us to our only silverware of the season with a fine win in the Kalmar Cup.
Our Peninsular cup team got demolished in round 1 against a resurgent Northwich early on in the year, the Kalmar Shield team also suffered an early exit.
All in all a positive year, a few old faces were missing who we hope may return in the future. We welcomed a few fantastic new members to our ranks.
On a personal note, Damian won division 1 player of the season with a score of 6.5/8. (Lee Kay from Atherton should have pipped me to this but he let me off when Atherton defaulted the final fixture.)
A mention to Ilya Dubov as well who won 8 of his ten games across all competitions this season.
Final table’s below:
