Our first league match was a tremendous win at Wimslow, despite having a lower average rating than our opponents. Most of the rating discrepancy was on the top two boards. Simon Calvert has overtaken me by a few rating points, so I used team captain's prerogative to place him on board 1, where he had a great result, drawing with Mike Lamb who is rated over 300 points higher. I overcame a smaller rating gap (150 points) to win on board 2. Ratings were fairly even on the other four boards, but James Lawrence, Sheraz Khalil, Vijay Kakarparthi and John Roche (on his Stockport League debut) all won.
We came very close to causing a Cup upset. Danilo had a good win with the Black pieces on board 1, but on the other boards we had rating deficits averaging about 300 points, so kudos to Sheraz Khalil who also won, and to Tom Tomkins who drew. Tony Lane and James Lawrence lost leaving the score level, so the match depended on the last game to finish, which was me (Reg). A draw would have given us the match on tiebreak (lower board elimination) but I was unable to hold a difficult Knight & pawn ending.