Time was when the season finished promptly at the end of April, but these days matches continue to the end of May and sometimes beyond.

So it was not until the second half of June (although you wouldn’t think so from the weather) that our season reached its conclusion with the final of the Thames Valley KO Cup away to league champions Hammersmith.

Over six boards we like to think we always have a chance but this time it wasn’t to be. We lost the bottom three boards pretty quickly and never looked likely to win all the top three boards. Chris might have won an exciting game, but by that time Mike had already gone down in a tight ending.

Many congratulations to Hammersmith on a richly deserved victory and on completing the league and cup double. Other clubs can learn a lot from their recent successes.

	Hammersmith		Richmond
1	Ryszard Maciol 212	0:1	Gavin Wall 223
2	Thomas Bonn 199	1:0	Mike Healey 212
3	Carsten Pedersen 196	½:½	Chris White 177
4	Bajrush Kelmendi 186	1:0	Raghu Kamath 169
5	Sylvain Eche 195	1:0	Bertie Barlow 162
6	Jim Stevenson 182	1:0	Max Wood-Robinson 176
		4½:1½

My thanks to everyone who supported the team during the season, especially to Gavin and Mike for their outstanding results.

I’ll post some views on the Thames Valley League results within the next week or so.