Our A team’s first match of the season was away to last season’s champions Hammersmith, who will be favourites to repeat their success this season. We were helped by their change of home night from Monday to Tuesday, but were still outgraded.

Our new captain Mike Healey reports:

A decent effort tonight in what may well end up being the toughest match of the season (we can hope!), away to the pre-season favourites. Onward and upward!

1 saw a nice win for Gavin, a win by Bertie so far beyond my pay grade if someone had said two 2700s were playing I wouldn’t have been surprised.

Chris W on 4 chopped a position so dull sadly even he couldn’t excite it, with Martin on 3 doing the opposite, drawing an up-and-down tussle against a determined opponent.

The rest were various tales of woe…Apologies for the loud sighing from my board in particular.

Well done to all those who turned out tonight (and for being on time! Very impressed!).

	Hammersmith A		Richmond A
1	Ryszard Maciol 209	0:1	Gavin Wall 224
2	Thomas Bonn 201	1:0	Mike Healey 217
3	Tony Niccoli 196	½:½	Martin Benjamin 181
4	Jim Stevenson 194	½:½	Chris White 180
5	Bajrush Kelmendi 188	1:0	John Bass 176
6	Carsten Pedersen 192	1:0	John Burke 175
7	Sylvain Eche 183	1:0	Chris Baker 168
8	Christof Brixel 165	0:1	Bertie Barlow 167
		5:3

I’ll just add my thanks to Mike for captaining the team, and congratulate him on getting the B-squad (Messrs Benjamin, Bass, Burke and Baker) out – something I was never able to do!