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Yorkshire Chess History |
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Woodhouse Cup, 1888-89 |
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For the season 1888-89, Hull joined the five teams who had been due to participate in the previous season, so avoiding a bye in each round (or so it seemed).
The annual West Yorkshire Chess Association committee meeting for the fixing of fixtures and related matters was held in Leeds on Thursday, 18/10/1888. The rules were once again a topic for consideration, and it was decided a time limit of 18 moves per hour should apply in both the Woodhouse Cup and the Bradford Observer Trophy competitions, with the use of clocks and the recording of the moves of the games being compulsory. It was also agreed that the club with the right to specify the number of boards should give to their opponents a minimum of 10 days’ notice of their choice.
The original fixture list for the season 1888-89 was as follows (first-named in each pairing being the home team):
* The fixtures in italics were nullified by the withdrawal of Wakefield, then Hull, creating byes for their opponents. (Click on underlined pairing for match details.)
A problem then arose as Wakefield decided they would have to withdraw from the Woodhouse Cup, primarily because they felt they would be unable to send teams to Hull and Sheffield. Their younger players were committed to the Bradford Observer Trophy competition, and so were debarred from providing back-up resources to fill Woodhouse Cup team boards left vacant by senior members declining to travel to distant Hull, and quite-distant Sheffield. To some extent this shows the introduction of a minor competition proving to be detrimental to the interests of the premier competition. (This was seen in more-recent times when the introduction of inter-county competitions at a variety of grade-limited competitions led to a reduction of counties competing in the Open sections – at least in the Northern Counties Chess Union.)
An unfortunate consequence of Wakefield’s withdrawal was that it left both Bradford and Hull with three away matches and one home match. Bradford, supported by Hull, therefore requested that the pairings be redone so as to equalise home and away matches for the five remaining teams. This was considered by a West Yorkshire Chess Association committee meeting at the Exchange Café, Bradford, on 01/02/1889, but the committee elected to stick with the existing fixtures.
On hearing this news, feeling they had not been fairly dealt with by the WYCA committee, Hull in turn withdrew for the Woodhouse Cup. That left just Bradford, Halifax, Leeds and Sheffield contesting the Woodhouse Cup. The original fixture list was retained for teams still in the competition, so that matches which could have been all played over three Saturdays were still spread over five Saturdays.
Final results are summarised in the following table.
* Scoring was 1 match point for a win, and half a match point for a draw. + denotes score with some unknown adjudication results not included.
The tie between Sheffield and Leeds necessitated a play-off, with venue reversed from that of the original fixture between those two teams. In the event, two Leeds players failed to turn up. Whether they were culpable or the victims of misfortunate is a matter James white didn’t elaborate on in his report in the Leeds Mercury of 13/04/1889, which referred to the missing Leeds players as “unfortunates”. Sheffield won the play-off on 06/03/1889 by 10½ to 9½.
Various local papers covered these matches. The details below are mostly from the Bradford Observer (cuttings in WYCA Minutes Book) and the Sheffield & Rotherham Independent, and the Leeds Mercury. Some obvious typographical errors have been corrected for the purposes of the following match details:
“@” denotes result by adjudication “d” denotes result by default
Identities of the players would appear to be as follows:
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Created 26/05/2014 |
Stephen John Mann |
Last Updated 15/06/2014 |