I arrived at Clifton at ten to eight and was initially perplexed and worried to find only ten players sitting down and the two missing ones were ours. Fears of being asked to step in were somewhat allayed by the fact that the captain did not show any signs of relief when he saw me come in! I soon found out from Gareth that the others were expected any minute and the clocks had only just been started. Panic over. I heard later that Chris and Mike had been delayed by the accident on the M32 and Clifton had sportingly agreed to start 15 minutes late.

After a brief sojourn in the bar with Dave we returned to find six fairly even games. I thought Henry had a positional plus to go with a handy time advantage. Conversely, Richard was a bit down on the clock but other than that the games looked pretty level. As I know less than nothing about the King's Indian I shouldn't really comment on Michael's game but he seemed to know what he was doing having penetrated the Queen's side with a rook while the centre was fairly well blocked.

The middle period of the match saw Nigel and Mike conclude hostilities with their opponents after modest probing and jousting and with honour satisified all round. Then Michael proved that his penetration on one side combined with sound defence on the other were enough eventually to force the win of a piece and the game. 2-1 up with about 40 minutes to go for the final stages.

You had to assume that Henry's positional advantage plus the fact that he had 30 minutes to James's 5 should eventually play out in our favour. Chris's game with Gareth was more level both positionally and clock-wise. Richard had sacrificed the exchange against Duncan and now started finding some of the best moves of the night. He won back the exchange and emerged a comfortable pawn up, probably winning, but was down to a couple of minutes. And so to the time scrambles.

When six heavyweight players come down to blitz finishes it becomes a bit of a lottery and I don't think we have even managed to re-construct all the moves yet. Quite honestly we could have won all three or lost all three. You have to take your hat off to James for first resisting so stubbornly against Henry and then indeed turning the tables but in the last moments it was he who made the final error and Henry who hung in longer, leaving us 3-1 up. Sadly for Chris and Richard, the boot was on the other foot and we had to be satisfied with a good point against very tough opponents. I think the nerves of all six were well and truly shaken, never mind the spectators!

We may recall that last year the League AGM narrowly voted down a proposal to allow incremental time adjustments in Division One. If ever a match demonstrated how such a rule change is needed, this was it. I shall probably not be playing in Division One next season but I can well see why the top players deserve to have the best possible playing conditions and this should include incremental time limits to enable them to utilise their skills more fully than the present rules allow. However, it will be up to them to seek such a change if they think fit.