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Year Book 2018-19 Contents |
Notices |
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30/06/2018
NCCU Pennine Cup for County Under-16 (age) Teams
After a false start when this event was expected to be revived in 2017, this event is now scheduled for 6th October, 2018, in the Music Room of Ackworth School, Pontefract Rd, Ackworth, Pontefract WF7 7LT, under the direction of Tim Wall of Northumberland. Whether this is to count as 2017-18 or 2018-19 is unclear and of little importance.
It is being run as a 3-round jamboree between teams of 8 players. The time-limit is 50 minutes per player with 10-second increments. A Yorkshire team of 10 players (including reserves) is to participate under the captaincy of Peter Cloudsdale (White Rose Junior Chess Academy) and Noel Stewart (YCA Secretary for Junior Chess, and WRJCA). A reasonable turn-out from the other northern counties is expected.
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The organisation of junior events between the northern counties had had a chequered history over the last twenty years. So much depends on finding somebody willing and able to take on the organisation.
Since 1936-37 there has been an NCCU Boys’ Under-18 Individual Championship. In effect, “Boys’” was synonymous with “Junior”, in as much as girls didn’t then enter into the perception or reality of things.
Much later, over the weekend 24th-25th August 2000, an inaugural NCCU individual junior championship event was held for age groups U-8, U9, U-10, U-11, U-12, U-13, U-14, U-16 and U-18. After being held annually, these junior championships seem to have lapsed after 2008, and were acknowledged to be defunct at the 2010 NCCU AGM, though the Boys Under-18 has continued, embedded within a congress which is not specifically a junior one.
At team level, from 1994-95, and probably before, there had been an NCCU Under-18 inter-county team jamboree. Then, in 1998, prominent Yorkshire player and energetic organiser, Gary Kenworthy (now long-resident way down south) instituted an additional event, an under-16 team event to fill a perceived “gap”, for which he presented the Pennine Cup - not to be confused with the NCCU’s Pennine Shield for U-140 (grade) teams. Although the Pennine Cup was originally organised independently of either the NCCU or the YCA, due to work-related pressures on Gary’s time, control of the event was passed to the NCCU, who from 2001-02 formally have organised it, or not organised it, as the case may be.
Meanwhile, from 1999-00, there was a parallel event for under-18 girls. The Girls’ event last took place in 2006-07, since when it hasn’t been held. The Boys’ U-18 Jamboree was last held in 2011-12.
Since then, for no obvious reason, greater effort has been directed towards keeping the Pennine Cup going than to reviving the U-18 Jamboree, or indeed the U-18 Girls’ Jamboree. Since the demise of the U-18 events, the Pennine Cup has been held twice, in 2012-13 and 2015-16, and now it is planned for 6th October 2018.
The importance of a venue reasonably central to all the northern counties was made evident in 2011-12 when a Merseyside team set out at 6.30 a.m. for an 11 o’clock start in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
Summary of Pennine Cup events:
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