– from Peter Purland

This year the team from Ile de France which we had played in 2011 visited us. The original idea was to come to London and stay at Chessington but the room prices of £195 per night and hire prices of £250 per day put us off. Fortunately, Suites Hotel which we had used for our training weekend, came to our rescue with a good deal and the French flew in to Manchester. They did not have an easy journey as, unbelievably, they had been separated by an automatic door at GDG and 6 had to come on a later flight. Anyhow, with a bit of luck I got them all on a bus (really decent bus driver) and we went to Suites where we all settled in and I got the equipment unloaded. Some of the England team also stayed there and after a good night’s sleep all were ready for battle in the morning.

Both sides started a player short so we played 13 a side in the match. The games all lasted a long time but we were gradually going under. With 7 games finished it was 5.5 – 1.5 in favour of Ile de France. Unfortunately things did not improve in the second half and the final score in round one was 3.5 – 9.5. We had just under an hours break for lunch and then restarted. The second round was better being 4-4 at one stage although, unfortunately, the later results did not go in our favour and the final result was 8-5 for Ile de France giving a final score of 17½ – 8½ in favour of the French.

We then sorted ourselves out prior to having dinner together in the restaurant. On Sunday we invited 7 further English and 34 players took part in the rapidplay which we played on Fisher 20 +10 timings. With a 1000 start we were hoping for a 1700 finish. The morning went very smoothly and there were no problems over timing. We started round four after lunch at 1350 but with 6 French on the top four boards. How often have we said that in rapid play.

The final round saw the top three boards all light blue!! As a result the winner was Alexandre Ek, followed by Thomas O’Sullivan with Yovann Gatineau third. At this point we had 5 English players half a point behind, Callum Brewer, Gautam Jain, Ashwyn Kalyana, Tharshan Kuhendiran and Karam Sangha. This was especially good for Karam as he is not yet in the squad. We then had the closing ceremony with Callum and Ryan Reed getting prizes in the rapid play as well as Rohan Yesudian and the other 4 on 4 points who all got small tokens.

The final day I took the group to Blackpool Pleasure Beach. We got the train up and spent 5 hours going on rides, eating and, certainly for the youngsters, generally enjoying themselves. Unfortunately the weather was decidedly unkind but for youngsters in a fairground this did not dampen their spirits. We arrived back in Liverpool at 8pm and said our goodbyes on the station.