It may be boring to be competing for second or third place every year, but the real excitement - in my opinion - in the London League 1st division is not the Drunken Knights v Wood Green match, but the fight to avoid relegation. Ilford, who I captain, is one of the weaker teams, but we've managed to stay up in all but one of the last ten years.J T Melsom wrote: I think that if I ran a London league club with a reasonably strong team that had grown 'organically' and then found we were always only aiming for second place each year I'd get bored, however often I got to play a GM.
Being relegated is quite a blow for most individuals in the team (those who want to play equal or stronger opposition that is) as there is a significant drop in playing strength between the two divisions (when Ilford went down we easily won all 11 matches in division 2).
Last year the relegation battle was very competitive and was not decided until the final match (Ilford's player saved a very bad adjourned position against Streatham, who went down instead). This year it seems two relatively weak teams will go down. Next year it will be much harder to stay up as the promoted teams will be stronger than the relegated ones.
The advantage of playing for a 'weak' 1st division club is that you do normally play against higher-graded opposition ... always looking for new players to join us!
Finally, Nevil Chan has always behaved perfectly as a captain and I certainly believe what he posted above.