Heidenfeld Trophy Report 2006/07

The team was comprised of the following players :-

Player Rating

Alan MacDonagh 1733

Alec Tyrrell 1699

Tomas Bacjar 1743

Fred Armstrong 1668

Gedas Jacubauskas 1683

John Loughran 1655

Gerry Behan 1611

Pat Fitzsimons (Capt) 1607

In addition, Eugene McMorrow, Ray Hearty, Victor Murray, Sean Loftus and Peter McGrath subbed for us during the season.

We began the season with a narrow 4.5 – 3.5 win over Kilkenny. This was followed by a narrow defeat to Phibsborough by a score of 3.5 – 4.5 and further disaster against Rathmines A who beat us 5.5 – 2.5 leaving us with just 10.5/24 points after three rounds. However, thankfully our form picked up after these early mishaps when we recorded a 5-3 victory against Tallaght in Round 4 and a 4 – 4 draw against Bray in round 5. When we played at home to a strong Celbridge team in round 6 nothing less than victory would do if we were to have any hope of mounting a serious challenge for promotion as the two teams that had already beaten us were setting the pace at the top of the table. In the event we won 5 -3 against Celbridge without losing any individual games with Tomas’s win over Martin Wallace being a particular highlight.

This buoyed up the teams morale going into our programme of matches in the new year. We recorded 4 excellent wins in rounds 7 – 10 winning by 5.5 – 2.5 against Curragh, Rathmines B and Malahide B and by 6.5 – 1.5 against Malahide A. This run of results left us in third place going into the final round where we needed to outscore Phibsborough by 2 points to finish in second place and gain promotion. In the event, we managed to beat Lucan by 4.5 – 3.5, in the final round. However, although Phibsborough went down by 5- 3 to Celbridge, to leave us level on 52.5 points with them, we finished third on tie-break as we had lost the “head to head” clash with Phibsborough in round 2. This meant that we missed out on promotion by the narrowest possible margin.

There were some excellent performances during the season with 5 players getting scores of 7 or more in their games. Fred Armstrong remained unbeaten throughout the campaign and Gerry Behan got 7/11 despite playing black in every game ! Hopefully we will be able to carry our good form during 2007 into next season and make up for the disappointment of missing out on promotion by going one better in 2008 !

Pat Fitzsimons

Captain

Heidenfeld Team 2006/07