Horfield B is one of those teams against whom you never know how you'll do. Last season we beat them 4-2 twice with no losses. This was reversed this season before Christmas so we needed to try harder on our visit to Redland.

But both Steve and Andrew C were feeling rather off colour. They were first to finish with Steve unable to capitalize on a modest pull from the opening against Patryk, while Andrew came unstuck against a piece-winning combination by Matias.

I was happy enough to agree a draw. Some kibitzers reckoned that Nigel may have missed something but I am going to stick with my belief that a draw was fair enough, even though it left us 2-1 down.

Fear not! We still had promising positions on the two White boards. Oli seemed to have all the play against Paul, although Black contrived a rook and pawn ending that was far from obviously lost. And Mike won a pawn against Rob in the kind of position where he would often grind out the full point.

Meanwhile Andrew M had gone for complicated piece play in the middle of the board before getting his King to safety. John saw through it and forced the win of a couple of pawns, giving him three against two on both sides of the board. That was an ending we could never hope to hold.

So, back to Oli and Mike, where two wins, please, would draw the match. But Paul's defence was too solid and Mike, striving for a difficult conversion, in the end missed the right sequence for a perpetual and ended up losing a knight and, with it, the game.

We certainly can't complain about the outcome this time. Not to worry, our position of mid-table mediocrity is still quite secure, well, for the time being, at least.