St Lance of Tahmoor

Been such a long time since i have blogged :(

Anyhow the grade Matches started last night and Campbelltown under 1600 team had to travel to Manly for their first round encounter.

Now Let me set the situation up. The Previous Monday the campbelltown under 1600 team had arranged to get a lift with one of their original players. He had to withdraw from the team on the thursday and all of a sudden we had a problem. We were down a player and without a lift to manly. I do not drive, nor does one of the other players and another did not want to drive over to Manly. So..... we had to find a lift as well as another player. I emailed around to try to see if i could swap the round one and two draws to enable the U1600 team to travel to Manly with the U2000 team. After a day of begging and pleading Saint Lance of Tahmoor came to the rescue! He would drive and fill in Board 4. He was not really expected to win with his 1013 rating. It would have to be the other 3 boards that would have to perform.

The plan was to pick one guy up from near his home at minto at about 5.30.... the second guy near Brooks road onramp to the M5 motorway. Picked up the first player just a little earlier than schedule. Then we got to Brooks Road and..... no one was there.......

We then get a phone call.....
"where are ya"
"at Brooks Road, where you told me you were meeting us"
"s**t! i'm at Minto McDonalds" (we had originally planned on meeting there before hand but we decided to leave at about 5.30pm instead of 6.00pm, thus the first player's lift couldn't take him to the McDonalds so we picked him up from near his place.)
"ok we'll come and pick you up"
"ok i'll be near the roundabout."

We get to McDonalds..... nope he wasn't there..... Do a lap of the block...... no sight of him......
"Where are you?"
"i'm near minto station."
"Bugger, McDonalds side or other side"

"ok be there soon."

Get to Minto station....... no where to be seen!
"Where are you?"
"Just walked over the pedestrian bridge"
"well you can walk back over it! we are on the other side"

several minutes later we are all in the car heading towards Brookvale..... our half an hour earlier leaving time has now evaporated and were about ten minutes late.

As it turned out we ended up getting there about ten minutes early.

My game was an interesting Kings indian Defence which i think i might have misplayed. But was able to salvage a draw. Next thing i know our board one comes in and tells me that both our boards one and two have lost. "Damn we're looking at a 3.5-0.5 slaughter here.......and Lance is down on time. At this point i decided to go for a non alcoholic beverage. When i came back Lance was up on time! And Attacking! And the time control of 30 moves had just been played in the 75 minutes so they had 30 min each to finish the game. Lance won his opponents queen for a rook in a combination involving a pin, bishop on king. Lance had defeated his higher rated opponent!

Yes, our last minute ring in saved the day for us. We still lost 2.5-1.5 but it was now a respectable loss.... not a huge loss.