8 March 2017
Limewood played Moortown in the semi-final of the Arjay knock-out competition. It was not going to be easy as our top two boards faced adverse grade differences of over 40 points each.
Chris Tatham at Board 3 set the ball rolling nicely in the Limewood direction with a fine win over Mark McGinty.
And then Bob Maltby (129) overcame the massive grade difference to extract a draw from Richard Hardy (173) while Paul May (146) narrowly missed gaining a halfpoint or better from Peter Roony (grade 189).
With the score evened at 1½ to 1½, we believed that the tiebreak rules would send the Limewood team forward to the Final on account of grade difference. The Moortown team thought so too. And so Limewood went home rejoicing.
Alas, when the results were reported to the Fixtures Secretary, he gently pointed out that we hadn’t read the rules properly. Under the Arjay tiebreak rules (too long and boring to repeat here but they are on the LCA website) it is Moortown who progress to the Final and not Limewood.
Heartbreak is hardly the word.
But that should not diminish Limewood’s achievement in drawing the match with the high-level Moortown team. A fine display by every member of the team – a performance to be proud of.