In the Under 1650, Kent v Greater Manchester was to be played on Saturday 18th May at Coventry Bridge Club, 150 Binley Road, Coventry, CV3 1HB, while Yorkshire received a bye.

In the following, the first rating is the September 1st rating, which counts for eligibility (in all rounds), the second is the May 1st rating which counts for board order for the rounds played in May, and the “ave.” is the average of the May ones.

		Kent	6‑10	Greater Manchester
W	1593 (1735)	Dominik Swiatkowski	1-0	Vijay Kumar	1645 (1712)
B	1649 (1701)	Ehsan Farahmandpour	1-0	Paul Leonard	1647 (1704)
W	1608 (1677)	David Lettington	0-1	Ethan Parker	1561 (1703)
B	1622 (1641)	John R McKenna	0-1	Mohammed Andeel	1569 (1668)
W	1606 (1617)	Nick Allen	1-0	Steven M Flaherty	1606 (1638)
B	1626 (1590)	Rick Hennessy	0-1	Matthew Poon	1581 (1611)
W	1598 (1589)	Lee Brockwell	1-0	Bryony Eccleston	1467 (1602)
B	1504 (1586)	William Walshe	½-½	Ashton Morrissey	1417 (1581)
W	1580 (1575)	Nicholas Glanvile	0-1	Chris Gallagher	1494 (1579)
B	1593 (1572)	James F McKenna	½-½	Anthony Jinks	1576 (1575)
W	1555 (1546)	Tyrone R Jefferies	0-1	Mohammed Rohman	1502 (1573)
B	1570 (1553)	Prabhath Amarasinghe	0-1	Paul Curran	1550 (1569)
W	1533 (1553)	Conrad Hall	1-0	Dylan Prothero	1457 (1541)
B	1531 (1504)	Anthony M Langley	0-1	J Coupe	1482 (1514)
W	1458 (1445)	Ian F Mills	0-1	Samarth Misra	1455 (1473)
B	0103 ()	Default	0d1	David Kilmartin	1484 (1464)
	ave 1484				ave 1531

Kent started a board short, thus going a game point down from the start, but on the remaining boards had a miniscule advantage as regards ratings which suggested they’d get 8½ game points from those 12 boards, making the rating forecast for the final score to be 8½-7½ in Kent’s favour, so it looked like being close and determined by form on the day. The first four results to come in in fact went 2½-1½ in Manchester’s favour, increasing their lead to 2 game points. Next was another win for Manchester, then a Kent win, then another Kent win. Thereafter, Manchester piled on the points faster than Kent , cruising to a 10-6 win in favour of Greater Manchester.

Things are now set for semi-finals in all sections being played on 08/06/2024 (or 09/06/2024 if mutually agreed), when 20 teams will be playing either in the Open section or in one of the Under-nnnn sections, 3 from Yorkshire, 3 from Greater Manchester, 1 from Northumberland and 1 from Cleveland. That’s 8 out of 20 from the NCCU and 12 from the other four unions combined. (Another 4 teams will be playing in the Minor Counties.)