2022 Season

[MartinCarpenter]

Day 1 of this yesterday, in accordance with the useful data Stephen Mann gathered here: https://mannchess.org.uk/YNotices/2022- ... mption.htm about Yorkshire's local leagues, the Yorkshire league is back somewhere near pre pandemic strength.

Still down a few teams, especially from Sheffield, but not remotely bad.

Sheffield's remaining team are fearsome and to judge by their team against Wakefield rather keen! York A looking strong as usual. Everyone else probably roughly as you'd have expected.

Many bonus points for the York D vs Harrogate C match comprising 99% juniors!

[Stephen Westmoreland]

Fielding juniors regularly now for Holmfirth. We had three playing against Bradford B and two on Saturday Vs Dewsbury. In two weeks on Wednesday the entire team Vs Honley will be juniors. A great revival is occuring.

[MartinCarpenter]

Up to week three now, so the leagues are starting to take shape.

The Woodhouse looks likely to be back to a 'traditional' Sheffield/York A race, although Hull are definitely fielding their most consistently solid teams for a fair while and should get at least third if they keep turning them out.

Sheffield rather flexing their muscles with a 7-1 win vs Leeds. I can remember a few matches like that myself - you're facing a potentially very strong, tricky but erratic opponent so turn out a really strong team and then the opposition don't really quite turn up.

York A have definitely got a few reinforcements to come in but the squad isn't quite what it was and Sheffield are definitely favourites at this point.

Relegation looks to be three way, and quite possibly not decided until the final few rounds when they'll all play each other. Sheffield B look easily the strongest of the teams who might come up. Holmfirth doing quite well in the Silver Rook with those juniors

I hadn't realised that Settle now had a team! Goodness.

[Stephen Westmoreland]

3.5 York and 2.5 Holmfirth yesterday with 11 players aged 18 and under. Fantastic to see.

[MartinCarpenter]

3.5 York and 2.5 Holmfirth yesterday with 11 players aged 18 and under. Fantastic to see.

Brilliant York D on top of that league too, they might well pass the rather older York C on the way up!

Over in the Woodhouse, York A survived a seriously tough match away to Leeds CCCC, scraping through 4.5 - 3.5 after various time scrambles I chose not to watch! Sheffield marching on much more confidently. Big potential decider due in January.
(no result for Calderdale - Hull yet, maybe they postponed.).

A few, no doubt football related, defaults about the place. York B getting an 8-0 vs Bradford could make a big difference with relegation.

Sheffield B & Huddersfield on top of the IM Brown and presumably likely to stay there now.

[Andrew Zigmond]

The two Calderdale vs Hull matches were postponed for legitimate reasons that I am not putting on a public forum.

[MartinCarpenter]

Well Sheffield - York was a very serious match and a well deserved win for Sheffield who have been incredibly consistent so far this season. Seemed a well played match overall, a lot of tough games.
https://ecflms.org.uk/lms/node/120296

Any team fielding Jonathan Nelson on 8 is a serious threat! We've always actually reckoned that a unified/interested Sheffield would be almost impossible to stop, and this season we seem to have it.

Hull remain joint top, and have to yet to play Sheffield so might be the best alternative hope. Very hard to see York doing it now with Sheffield's massive game point cushion.

I just saw all those teams in the U18 Championship! Impressive

[MartinCarpenter]

Will add that it was nice to see how happy Jim Burnett was at finally being on the winning side of a match against us - he spent I don't quite know how many decades nobly playing board 1 for Doncaster, and from my memory for some reason quite often ended having to play Richard Palliser against us.

Rather different this time round! Exceptionally well earned, as will be the title if they win it.

[MartinCarpenter]

Trotting on - a rather amazing match in York vs Harrogate A. We managed to go 3-0 down inside 25 moves, losing all those games with white. My loss was maybe least ugly and it wasn't nice! Luckily some very calm experienced heads involved to grind and salvage a 4.5 - 3.5 win.

Sheffield won easily vs Bradford and Hull won a very close match vs a very strong Leeds team to keep their challenge intact.

https://ecflms.org.uk/lms/node/125796

Calderdale away next week for Hull, then Sheffield and York to finish. So hard work but they've got a seriously good team.

Wakefield and Rose Forgrove look almost relegated, although Harrogate will definitely want to win vs Rose Forgrove on the next round.

[MartinCarpenter]

Very impressive win for Hull in their catch up match vs Calderdale.

Huge match for the title with them away at Sheffield this weekend. In some ways they're slightly unlucky to have Sheffield at the end of the season. They'd have had very good chances vs them if they'd played early in the season and got to face a 'normal' strength team - iirc that's basically what Bradford did when they won it back in 2014. It'll presumably be tougher now of course, but not hopeless.

Hope everyone has a fun match.

[Alan Walton]

iirc that's basically what Bradford did when they won it back in 2014

I think you find that season we played them on 29/03/2014 (exactly the same weekend as this year)

Match Card as follows (Bradford away)

Andrew Ledger 1/2 Matthias Gantner
Allan Potts 0-1 Alan Walton
Paul Cumbers 0-1 Matthew Webb
Denis Molofej 0-1 David Grant
Samuel Milson 0-1 Adam Lang
Peter Hempson 1-0 Winston Williams
Jeremy Hamm 1/2 Julian Chapman
Michael Johnson 1/2 Mike Walker

[MartinCarpenter]

Faulty memory, it seems Checking the archive, I think maybe I was remembering us missing Adair vs you? That's only one player, but that's all we added back then anyway.

You definitely had a very strong team that year and definitely deserved it.

I do think that the gap between the normal and strongest teams has grown for York & Sheffield - there's been some churn but at full strength Sheffield basically replace that bottom three from '14 with Oskar, Jim B and Ross. York can be even more drastic.

[MartinCarpenter]

As an aside the two players on the best aggregate score for the season so far are Jim Burnett and John Atkinson (5.5/7).

Definitely a season for veterans! I wouldn't dare to guess which of them started playing in the Woodhouse first

I'm pretty sure that John was present for at least some of Hull's massive run of wins back in the 90's.

[Andrew Zigmond]

Firstly the Sheffield vs Hull result is in with Sheffield winning by the narrowest possible margin.

Martin's recollection of the season Bradford won is faulty. As per the convention of the time York and Sheffield were due to play in the final round of fixtures and by coincidence Bradford were set to face those two teams in the rounds immediately before. All three teams entered round 9 on 8/8 - Bradford then stunned York and proved it was no fluke by beating Sheffield in the match recorded above. This meant that all Bradford had to do was mop up against a lower rated team in the final round leaving York and Sheffield playing a dead rubber.

[MartinCarpenter]

Firstly the Sheffield vs Hull result is in with Sheffield winning by the narrowest possible margin.

Martin's recollection of the season Bradford won is faulty. As per the convention of the time York and Sheffield were due to play in the final round of fixtures and by coincidence Bradford were set to face those two teams in the rounds immediately before. All three teams entered round 9 on 8/8 - Bradford then stunned York and proved it was no fluke by beating Sheffield in the match recorded above. This meant that all Bradford had to do was mop up against a lower rated team in the final round leaving York and Sheffield playing a dead rubber.

Well done to Hull - closer than we got

Bradford actually do beat us on quite a regular basis, especially in that time period. We played 9 matches from 2008 - 2016, +5,=2,-2 to York. About right really.

The weird thing is that we won 4 of those matches by a combined game point total of 29-3 (?!!?). No explanation from the strengths of the teams involved! The 2014-15 match (7-1) was absurd as Bradford were really strong.

York - Sheffield has always been 5-3 at most one way or another, as you'd expect.

That 2014-15 season when Bradford were defending champions does slightly illustrate the point I was trying to make (and did garble.). They actually still had a really good team that year, huge wins in many matches. But they ran into an absolutely full strength York & Sheffield (both stronger than 13-14) and lost those matches.