Where on earth do I start? That has to be one of the most fun filled, hard working, intense and enjoyable weekends I have ever experienced!

If you are expecting a time honoured report on the event, you are asking the wrong person! Lets start off with the important bit...

I'd like to thank the following people for making the weekend the success it was.

Donald, John and Alan - Coaching, moral support words of advice. All appreciated
Hilary - for keeping her head when those around her were close to losing theirs :-)
John, Bappa, Lisa, David and all the rest of the parents who came down - Thanks for putting up with my jokes (which can be pretty awful at times), and for pitching in and helping even though you didn't need to. The laughs we all had together was one of the real highs of the tournament
Captiva, Alex and Rohan for traveling down, not expecting to get a game and playing for the Midlands when they were short (and doing a good job of it as well)
The residents of Room 31, whom decided that I really didn't need to get any sleep this weekend
SJC - for the loan of the Mon-Roi's
Jim the driver - for having a sense of humour in the face of adversity. one way streets and people forgetting jackets
All the players for behaving themselves, having a lot of fun and making a good weekend for us all.
and finally

Massive thanks to Phil and Jacqui - The weekend would not have been as good as it was without the immense amount of hard work you put into it.

Lets take a look at the teams and how they got on..

We'll start with the U12's (coached by Phil), tipped by most to be the winners of their section, they started off badly on the Saturday morning with a shock loss to the Midlands. I think it was more down to nerves than poor play to be quite honest. In the afternoon, they took their frustrations on the poor Welsh and roundly thrashed them 9-1. The game against the North was special. They had a very very strong side. In fact the U12's for the North were actually stronger than their U14's. When I put the team lists up, my heart sank as I thought we were on for a thrashing. 2 hours later and the North managed to scrape a 5.5-4.5 win against a team they outgraded by an average of 300 points per board. The entire U12 team were my "Men" of the match despite coming third.

The pleasing aspect of this is that we are likely to retain most of this team as most of the team are U11, Kai and Neely are 7 and 8 and will definitely have a future. Once the games are up I would draw attention to Kai's second game. It was outstanding and beautifully calculated. If he is like this at 7, what is he going to be at 10, 11 ..... Look out Alan Tate et al, we have someone out to get you :-)

I'll jump now to the U16's (coached by Alan). They were favourites to win their section and to be honest, if it was a more normal 4 hour time control, I think they would have as it suits most of them better than 1 1/4 hours thinking time. They did their best and were very supportive towards the U14 and U12 teams who seemed to exhaust them with questions all the time (and liked to play them at pool!)

What can I say about the U14's? (Coached by John Dempsey) No one (except John and Jacqui) expected them to win, we all felt that it was the weakest of the three teams. How wrong we were. I shared a dorm with the Lads of the U14 team. They were so annoyed about only drawing to the Welsh that they spent most of the evening, in the dorm, with chessboards, making sure they had their ideas for the next day. After lights out, I had to reprimand two of them (whilst trying my hardest not to laugh) who decided that they needed that little bit of extra coaching after lights were out and were playing by the light of their psp's. Well the mood on the Sunday was of determination. They felt they had let themselves down and were determined not to be beaten.

I wandered around the playing hall as I had agreed to let the players know the score on demand, so that they knew if they could take a draw or not. I was watching Lisa's game when Shivan whispered that he had won, and we only needed half a point to win the match. Lisa had spent most of the previous 20 minutes furiously defending a lost position. Her opponent made a mistake and she whipped off the last pawn to brilliantly secure a draw in a K&P v K&B endgame. At that point Alice came up to me and asked what the score was as she was going to offer a draw., On being informed that we had won already she said "Good, I'm off to go and beat him then !!!".

It is well argued that the Olympiad team perfomed better than they should under John's leadership and I'd like to think that it rubbed off on the under 14's. I have contacted the SFA and told them we charge reasonable rates for John (although I think even John would not be able to solve the mess that is Scottish Football!)

U14's I salute you. Excellent performance and a well deserved 1st place.

We carried 3 others with us. Captiva Mills was travelling to get some experience, Alex Finney was a travelling reserve and Rohan Sant was there to look after his little brother. I'm glad we took them as the Midlands suffered from an outbreak of the virus that is rampant up here and had a decimated team. All three played for the Midlands and did very well indeed. Special mention should go to Aaron Lewis. He was faced with a default on the Sunday and sportingly agreed to play for the Midlands U14 team, then played on Board 5 against a player about 400 points above him. Needless to say the grading difference was not noticable as Aaron simply took his opponent apart.

It was both an honour and a pleasure to be involved with the Scotland team. I really enjoyed it, and loved working with Phil and Jacqui (as usual :-) ). The camaraderie and spirit between the players and adults who travelled was an example of what it should be like anytime we go abroad. There were no failures and everyone was a winner.

Just as a footnote, we are going to be purchasing t-shirts for the Children that were selected. Anyone chosen to play for their countries should have something to remember it by!!!

 

Andy

ps If anyone wants a copy of any of the photographs, please drop me an e-mail and I will e-mail you with a better quality one.