The one thing we have never won in our long history in the Bristol League is the Minor Knockout. In fact, looking back over the last few years, we have never managed to beat either South Bristol or Clevedon - the nearest we came was losing to Clevedon on board count in 2014, so here was a chance to rectify all that.

The Final was played under the 2019-20 rules, using good old ECF grades for the last time ever and both teams had to stay below an average of 135. The reporting will use the new-fangled ones with a corresponding average of 1714.

The match was played in the shadow of the A team's home match with Grendel A and rumour has it that they were mighty relieved that we didn't try to call on any of them, well one in particular. In the semi final we had fielded Bilal Ahmed (currently retired), Richard Livermore (happily recovering now from health issues) and Aron Saunders, who has, in the meantime, ruled himself out by virtue of playing too darned well. So we were happy to manage with the best players still available. Needless to say, Clevedon arrived with a challenging line-up, including "old boy" Matthew.

We got off to a bad start when Mike miscalculated an attack on the enemy King but Tom and Grant recovered the situation, giving us a 2-1 advantage going into the closing stages. Needing just one and a half points it was, sadly, one of those evenings when everything that could go wrong did go wrong and instead of possibly three wins on the top three boards for Dave, Jack and James, we only managed two draws. At least it was a good thing that no one person needed to feel responsible for the result in the end!

So, another loss on board count. We shall have to try again to go one better in this season's edition of the Minor Knockout which will start after the League finishes next month.