Ilford Enter the North Circular League

ILFORD                                        4-1   WANSTEAD 3
NEVILLE TWITCHELL (B)    1-0    PAUL BARCLAY 162
UMAR YUNIS                            1-0    MARK MURRELL 157
LEONARDO STEFANONI      1-0    C SIDDO 134
LAVANAN AINKARAN         1-0    A COLLYER 126R
MARSHALL TUTU                  0-1      K JARDINE 108

An excellent start for Ilford in the NCCL beating Wanstead 3, our local. It’s a new league and venture for us, and there are many more matches against strong teams to come. Our 3 juniors on boards 2, 3, and 4 completely outplayed higher graded adults.
Lavanan quickly established a strong King’s Gambit attack against Collyer’s Falkbeer opening which went badly wrong and Ainkaran mopped up the endgame: King, rook and pawn against a lone, overworked knight and King. Similarly Leonardo’s kingside attack was at first held up by Siddo, but holding a pawn advantage into the endgame Stefanoni marched his King and pawns up the board to victory. On board 2 Murrell had a constrained opening tied and mislaid a knight to Umar’s Queen, knight and bishop attack. Paul Barclay was reduced to passive defence but eventually Neville blasted his way through. Our only loser was Marshall which was very generous of us as we allowed Jardine to play even though we could have defaulted him for arriving too late. But his play was strong once he had regained his breath, settled down, and he won the ending.
In this league the away team always has white on board 1.