West Wales Closed Championship (E.J. Clarke Trophy)

As planed the fourth round of the West Wales Closed Championship was held at the Briton Ferry Constitutional Club on the 12th April. As usual a number of players opted to rearrange but the games that were played yielded the following results:

Peter Bevan (3) 0 v 1 Ian Jones (3)
Moss McCarthy (2) 1 v 0 Paul Bevan (3)

John Davies (1½) 1 v 0 Joe Spooner (1½)

Greg Goold (1) 0 v 1 Sean Denton (1)

June Evans (1) 0 v 1 Steve Lockley (½)

Janet Evans (0) 1 v 0 Bye

Last year’s joint winner Ian Jones now leads the field and is the only player with a 100% score.

The games still to be played are:

Bill Flew (2) v Andrew Smith (2)

David Toner (2) v Tony Goodchild (1½)

Joel Chung (1) v Albert Easton (1)

Dennis Thomas (1) v Daniel Chung (1)

League Competition

In addition to the fourth round of the Championship there were seven matches played in the League.

In Division 1 White Knights B, lying in fifth place, had a comfortable looking 4-1 victory over third place Morriston A. The result lifts White Knights B above their C team with just one match each to go. On the same night Nidum also had a comfortable looking victory. This time with a 4½-½ score against Swansea University A.

Also in Division 1 BF All Blacks managed a second win in a row by beating White Knights C 3½-1½. Now that they are doomed to relegation they seem to be finding a bit of form.

In Division 2 a less than full strength Emperors could only draw with Morriston C. The dropped point gave Morriston B the opportunity to clinch the Division 2 title when they travelled to Upper Killay to face the Merlins. The 4-1 result in favour of the Morriston team means that they only need to turn up for their last match against BF Giants to take the Stan Cole Trophy.

White Knights D moved up into second spot ahead of Emperors when they were visited by a short-handed De la Beche A team. Draws on the top three boards plus a board 5 win plus a walkover on board 4 gave them the victory 3½-1½. It took the Knights onto the same match point score as the Emperors but with a better game point score. Emperors, however, have a match in hand.

The one match played in Division 3 was between De la Beche B and Harriers. In spite of being at home De la Beche defaulted their board 4 and ended up losing 1½-3½. From being title contenders at the beginning of March De la Beche B have now lost 4 of their last 5 matches and are destined to finish third or even fourth.

On a sad note the Hawks have struggled to field a team all season and they finally decided that they were not in a position to complete their fixtures. Currently this has been listed as 4 default matches plus other individual board defaults. Their withdrawal has not affected the position at the top of the table and the results of the matches they have played are still included.

Some confusion over dates has also resulted in St Michael’s defaulting their match against BF Brunel. This means that BF Brunel have gone through the season without dropping a single match point.

13/04/2018