This was pressurising for the controller, Bryan Bainbridge, in that in the late afternoon or early evening he would need to collate the final results, determine which consequently entitled teams wished to be nominated for the ECF final stages, and which teams wished to take up any vacancies arising from qualifying teams declining the option, and then by the end of the day submitting the NCCU’s nominations the ECF county competitions controller. Teams’ preferences regarding progression to the ECF final stages have already been solicited, so all may run smoothly, but there would seem to be a case perhaps for the final date for these matches being played being set a week earlier than the date for submitting nominations to the ECF. If disputes arose in these matches, affecting section placings, then chaos would ensue.

Section	Match	Venue
Open	Yorkshire v Northumberland	The Dolphin Centre, Horsemarket, Darlington, DL1 5RP
U-2050	Cleveland v Yorkshire	The Dolphin Centre, Horsemarket, Darlington, DL1 5RP
U-1850	Merseyside v Greater Manchester	Wallasey Central Conservative Club, 90 Manor Road, Wallasey, CH44 1BZ
U-1650	Yorkshire v Northumberland	The Dolphin Centre, Horsemarket, Darlington, DL1 5RP

Darlington is at the southern end of Co. Durham. The Dolphin Centre is a council-run leisure-cum-health centre which incorporates a swimming pool (currently closed for renovation), hence the name; it’s not Darlington’s answer to Hull’s The Deep, so no dolphins on show. Wallasey Central’s MP is currently Angela Eagle (Labour) who was joint 1976 British Girls' Under-18 chess champion and has in the past supported efforts to get government recognition of chess as a sport, so maybe they could have used the Wallasey Central Labour Club free of charge!

By the start of play, only 3 out of the 8 participating teams’ player lists had been entered on LMS, those of the U-1850 match and the Yorkshire U-2050 team, suggesting events at Darlington were not as under control as they were at Wallasey. The Cleveland team list appeared at 14.07, so that was two matches were filtering through okay to LMS. Results in the U-1850 match were being entered “live”. The players and some result for the U-1650 match then popped up much later on, perhaps because Jacob Smith had finished his own game and so had the time. Two instances of “Default” on the Northumberland side suggested at least two Northumberland players had not made it to the venue, but these in time turned into “New Player” explaining why no game result had been entered at that stage.

The Open match was worryingly late in firing up on LMS. Changes occurred as time went by regarding board 6, this evidently being due to a dispute which had arisen with regard to that board. A result of 0-0 where a game had been started but was not finished was the final ruling of the controller. (Obviously no inquest can be entered into here as feedback reveals wildly differing views on events.)

Had board 6 been defaulted by Yorkshire, as Northumberland held should be the case, then Northumberland would have won the title on match points. With the 0-0 result on board 6, Northumberland and Yorkshire tie on both match and game points, but Northumberland win the tie-break on the basis of the match between thew two teams. So, much ado about nothing.

Results were as follows.

	Open

Col	Yorkshire	4-7	Northumberland
B	Andrew J Ledger	½-½	Tim P Wall
W	Thomas Carroll	½-½	David J Walker
B	Gavyn Cooper	0-1	David P Mooney
W	Jonathan P Nelson	½-½	Thomas Eggleston
B	Phil R Watson	0-1	Graeme Oswald
W	voided	0-0	voided
B	Peter Shaw	½-½	Husain Nakara
W	Joe Varley	0-1	Zheming Zhang
B	Jim Burnett	0-1	David Armbruster
W	Peter JE Ackley	½-½	Nathan Ekanem
B	Daniel JS Sullivan	½-½	Yaroslav Kolodiy
W	Randolph E Donahue	1-0	John Aanuoluwapo Awesome

	U-2050

Col	Cleveland	7½-4½	Yorkshire
B	Francis Batchelor	½-½	Mike Bramson
W	Giuseppe Magazzù	1-0	Jonathan Round
B	John S Garnett	1-0	Mike R Stokes
W	Kevin J Wilson	0-1	Alex Burke
B	Stephen Cole	1-0	Alan Peart
W	Steven B Booth	½-½	Pete Redmond
B	Luke Owen	½-½	Paul Butterworth
W	Bill Wilson	½-½	Dale H Cullum
B	Jonathan Sams	½-½	Keith Thompson
W	Martin McLoughlin	½-½	Samir Cradock
B	Nicholas Webb	½-½	Gary Corcoran
W	Dominic Leigh	1-0	Isaac Fossey

	U-1850

Col	Merseyside	5-7	Greater Manchester
B	Brendan D Kane	0-1	Christopher Hodgson
W	Phil Ramsey	0-1	Alexander Burke
B	Mike J O'Mahony	½-½	Ondrej Chalupa
W	Phil Owen	1-0	Andy Laurence Coe
B	David G Owens	½-½	Chris Jardine
W	Artur Hrabchak	0-1	Thisumi Jayawarna
B	David Barnes	1-0	Simon Wright
W	Sanjoy K Banerjee	1-0	Alex Robinson
B	Shay Hanlon	½-½	Tarini Jayawarna
W	Chris Latham	0-1	Marcus Fung
B	Ben Ellington	½-½	Richard Leese
W	Mark S Wadsworth	0-1	Elliott Barnett

	U-1650

Col	Yorkshire	8-4	Northumberland
?	Toby Quaite	0-1	Michael EI Allen
?	Charlie Wainwright	1-0	Brandon Russell
?	John Grasham	1-0	Barry Edgar
?	Jacob Smith	1-0	Kevin Cox
?	Ian D Strickland	0-1	Ethan Tatters
?	Nathan Madzia	1-0	Irina Briggs
?	Colin Frank	1-0	Daniel Atcheson
?	Angelica Rowe	1-0	Didrik Leivdal
?	Robert Dennington	1-0	Kazam Khosravi-Nik
?	John Tate	0-1	Kai Harkensee
?	John G Taylor	1-0	Otto Nemeth
?	Sue Smith	0-1	Steven Nesworthy

Those entering data into LMS:

Tim Wall, Open match

Peter Harker, Cleveland U-2050

Andrew Wainwright, Yorkshire U-2050

Damien McElvenny, Merseyside v Greater Manchester

Jacob Smith, Yorkshire v Northumberland U-1650s.

Mick Norris, Greater Manchester, general prior setup.

This makes it look to the writer (though Bryan Bainbridge will doubtless issue the official version in due course) that final placings are:

Section	1st	2nd	3rd	4th
Open	Northumberland	Yorkshire	Gr. Manchester
U-2050	Gr. Manchester	Cleveland	Yorkshire
U-1850	Gr. Manchester	Yorkshire	Merseyside	Cumbria
U-1650	Yorkshire	Gr. Manchester	Northumberland
U-1450	Yorkshire	Gr. Manchester

It seems teams from Greater m/c and Yorkshire will all take up options as 1st or 2nd nominees for the ECF final stages.

PS All ECF County Championship parties were later listed here.