W/C 11/11/24 – Week 7

4 teams were in action during week 7, with a couple of away games and a couple of home games.

On the Tuesday, the 1st team visited title favourites Syston 1. Full of hope and promise, the Anstey team arrived to find that Syston had selected a strong side – presumably aware that we have the potential to be a banana skin for the top sides. Unfortunately, whilst the result doesn’t tell the whole story the 1st team succumbed to a 4-1 defeat with only captain Matt Connor getting the win.

Wednesday arrived and the 5th team made the journey up the A607 (other routes are available) to play Melton at the Royal British Legion in the town. Your author has never played there, but much of the pre-match build up was discussion about what to wear and how to keep warm. Apparently great strides have been made as the building is now much warmer. I’ll reserve judgement on that myself until I play there. Anyway, a strong 5th team came away with a warming 2.5-1.5 victory. The narrative was that Jakub had agreed a draw to win the match with the team 2-0 up, but post match it was revealed that there was still an undecided match that could have gone either way. This final match went in Anstey’s favour as it was later deciphered that the match was winning anyway.

Thursday saw the 3rd team and the 6th team at home. The 3rd team took on Ashby’s 3rd team and despite outgrading them on paper, Anstey suffered a 0.5-3.5 loss, with Mick gaining the only half point when the team were already 3-0 down in a level position.
The 6th team hosted Heathcote Arms’ second team, who are flying high this year after a good summer of recruitment. The only positive results were a draw for Curtis on board 1 against Josh Graves – both improving significantly, and young Swetark with an outstanding draw against the veteran Ray Beach. There were narrow defeats for Reidan, Alfie, and Seth in the 5 board match.