'A' team show Europe's golfers how to drive home an advantage

Montgomerie - nervous on the sidelines

As the European Ryder Cup team crawled fretfully to victory in Wales on Monday afternoon, Hebden Bridge ‘A’ showed them how it should be done as they walloped Todmorden ‘A’ ½ - 4½ on Monday night.

How Colin Montgomerie must have wished he could have picked up his clubs and taken to the course at Celtic Manor as the Ryder Cup drew to a climactic close. When the tension reached unbearable levels I’d guess that he would much rather have been playing the course than Captaining from the side of the greens.

Wrighty - tremendous in the frontlines

There are no such problems for Alastair Wright who Captains the Hebden Bridge ‘A’ team. He gets to have a direct impact on the outcome of his team’s matches and, so far this season, he has led by example with two wins out of two.

John Kerrane provides us with the match report below which is also published in this week’s Hebden Bridge Times (as was the exert from yesterday’s post on the ‘B’ team).

Hebden Bridge ‘A’ travelled to Todmorden on Monday evening to play their ‘A’ team in the first division of the Calderdale Chess League. The Todmorden club has been revived in the last two seasons and now boasts a strong line-up for it’s ‘A’ team. Hebden Bridge were missing two of their regular team members, but nonetheless, came away with a thumping 4½-½ victory. The main features of the match were Dave Shapland’s 16-move win on board 3, taking advantage of Richard Bedford’s exposed King, and Dave Wedge, on board 1, yet again getting into time trouble which would have be desperate for a lesser player, and still emerging with a win against Chris Edwards.

The individual results were:

Todmorden ‘A’ – Hebden Bridge ‘A’

C.Edwards 0 – 1 D.Wedge

S.Gornall 0 – 1 A.Wright

R.Bedord 0 – 1 D.Shapland

P.Edwards 0 – 1 M.Wedge-Roberts

G.Bowker ½ – ½ A.Leatherbarrow

½ – 4½

Here are some highlights from the games themselves. There are usually two sure things that you can stake your house on when the Hebden Bridge teams in Division 1 are playing

1. Dave Wedge will get into horrendous time trouble and yet somehow get away with a result
2. Andy Leatherbarrow will be involved in the last game of the night to finish as he tries to squeeze every drop of juice from his position

So, no surprises then when business was served as usual in this match. Dave got into horrendous time trouble against Chris Edwards but still emerged victorious and Andy Leatherbarrow played a game that finished at 11pm with just bare Kings left on the board!

Here is Dave’s game to which he has kindly added some commentary.

Now for Alastair’s game on board two. I’ve attached the whole game for your pleasure but the start position in the diagram below is at the dramatic denouement.

Finally, here is the board 3 game in which Dave Shapland served up a nice miniature. The notes are Dave’s.

In the next round of Division 1 fixtures the two Hebden Bridge teams will play one another. It will be interesting to see if the ‘B’ team can manage to score more than the half point Halifax ‘A’ and Todmorden ‘A’ have managed against the Champions so far.