Press Report

The fourth and last round of National Junior League matches, London North Region, was held at the Ellenborough Club, Enfield on Saturday 13 March. With each team having the remaining three matches to play on the nine match format the final table positions would be resolved. At the start of the day there were only two points between the top three teams in the table. Morpeth School led with 25 points, Southend and District second with 24 points and Chelmsford third with 23 points. Southend appeared to have the slightly easier run-in as they had already played Morpeth and Chelmsford and these two teams had yet to face one another.

The Chelmsford team started the day with a match against Bishop Challenor A who were bottom of the Division and only had two players. It wasn’t long before Matt Davis, Robert Shrimpton and James Austin had chalked up the 9-0 win over Mark Christian and Mikaaeel Ashal, all 3-0, the opponents not getting more than seven points in any one game and Robert winning one of his 0, 7, 0. With Morpeth winning 6-3 and Southend 7-2 the Chelmsford team led the Table by a single point.

The crunch match was now about to commence – Chelmsford v Morpeth School. With the match starting on two tables Robert beat David Ha 3-1 and Matt, after losing the first two 11, 12, came back strongly to take the next three 7, 4, 7, for a good Chelmsford start. James then beat Ryhanal Shuhayb 3-0 but Robert, after being 2-1 up lost to Joshua. Matt clawed his way back from 2-0 down to beat Ryhanal -13, -9, 4, 7, 10 whilst James beat David 3-0 to put Chelmsford in a winning position. Transferring to a single table Robert comfortably defended against Ryhanal for a 8, 7, 1 win but James lost on three 9’s to Joshua. Matt’s last match against David was a topsy turvey affair, finally losing -6, 5, 10, -1, 15 having saved two match points at 10-8 down and then failing to convert four match points. A 6-3 win and with Southend winning 6-3 Chelmsford had a one point lead over Southend and four over Morpeth.

However for the last round of matches Morpeth had the bottom team to play and would have expected a 9-0 win to put pressure on Chelmsford and Southend whilst they both had mid table opponents to play which would be no walkover. Chelmsford needed to match Southend’s result if they both won to take the title although they could still take the title with a three way tie. Against Mossford Matt, Robert and James all won their first matches over Sunil Jindal, Oliver Pink and Daniel Bean respectively and Robert made it 4-0 with a 3-0 win of Sunil. Daniel Bean dented Chelmsford’s hopes by beating Matt 3-0 but when James came back from 2-0 down to Oliver to win -8, -3, 4, 7, 7, Chelmsford were at least guaranteed a medal. With Southend not yet having lost in their match Daniel Bean ensured that the title went to Southend by beating Robert 10,6,10.James had an easy 4, 3, 4 win over Sunil and Matt lost to Oliver to make the final match score 6-3.

Southend took the title with 46 points, Chelmsford runners-up with 44 and Morpeth third with 42.

James 6 wins out of 8, Robert 6 winsout of 8 and Matt 5 wins out of 8

Arthur C. Clark

Chelmsford League Junior Match Secretary