Hallo, all you people out there in internet-land, it’s me again. Almost a year has passed since my last report, and about 3 times that since Jeremy (Webmaster – Ha!) did anything about this site, so I’m trying again.
Looking at my last report, I see that I was full of optimism for the B team in the new season. It’ll come as a shock to some of you, but my high hopes were realised, and we duly won division 5, losing only one match in the process! Drat Downend! The A team’s season didn’t go too badly, in that they succeeded in staying in division 3 for another season. The club as a whole benefited from new players in the form of the Bradford family (at least, the male part of it), plus “Honest John” Griffee, and we played the whole season with thirteen players (I mean it, count them!). Quite pleasing, since we started the previous season with nine that we could definitely count on.
The new format for the minor knockout will work well, when the bigger clubs wake up to the fact that they are eligible to play in it. (Rather a lot of defaults, because clubs hadn’t organised themselves).
To celebrate the club’s tenth birthday (we met for the first time on Tuesday April 7th 1993) we hosted our first ever tournament on Saturday 6th April, a six round rapidplay. The turnout was a bit disappointing, 36 players, but we had a good day, and Yate players walked off with no fewer than five of the prizes! (A good organiser will beat a good player any day). Still, we had two long distance entries, who came from far off Birmingham and fragrant Wolverhampton, which was nice. All were agreed it’s a good venue, and sunny weather helped. The five pubs you can see from the front door of Chipping Sodbury town hall may have had something to do with it too. Anyway, we’re going to try again, perhaps in October, watch out for more exciting news.
The Summer Lightning is upon us once more, and we’re due to go to Clifton for our traditional first round thrashing. It may prove difficult, as they have a full Summer of exciting events of their own, so I’m not sure when (or if) they will fit us in.
At the League AGM in May, I marched proudly forward to collect the division 5 trophy, only to find it had been put behind the bar at Clifton’s venue for “safekeeping”, and they’ve lost it! Still, Richard collected his cup for winning the under 80 section of the league congress, and James was officially made a member of the league management committee in his capacity of Grand Prix secretary, so the evening wasn’t a complete waste.
Right, I’m now going to email this to Jeremy, and start badgering him to put it on the site. Let’s see if we can get it there this side of Christmas.

Graham

Despite being unemployed, Jeremy apparently can't find time to update this site, so I'm sending this in, in the hope that he'll find time to include it! This is Graham speaking; club secretary, treasurer, B team captain, founder and general all round good egg!
Since the last update, there has been another season, and another Summer Lightning. The season went pretty much as expected, except that we lost yet another board one! Bob Lock decided he was all chessed out before the season started, so James Chappell took over, but after five games, he too left us, and Kevin Langmaid became board one for both teams! He seems to have done better for the A team than the B, which doesn't really make sense, but then he is from Birmingham. Actually, it's not generally known that this is Kevin's second spell with the club. He joined us in 1995, only played about half a dozen games before moving away, but he won most of them. The notable exception was a loss in a cup match against South Bristol, when he was beaten by one Lock, Robert J.!
The recent Summer Lightning, on the other hand, was a triumph by our standards! After losing 26-10 to Downend in the first round, we were top of the bottom, all the other "hoi polloi" having lost by much bigger margins. The name that really stands out in that match is Dave (Yate) Tipper, who lost to four of us, our combined grades probably don't add up to his! We followed this by hammering Nailsea 25.5-10.5, and then an excitingly close match against Downend 2nds, which went to the last game to finish, and ended in an 18-18 draw! The final game, something of an anti-climax and Keynsham turned up with only three players, was duly won (27-9, rather disappointingly) to give us an unprecedented fourth place in the table, above Clifton and Horfield!
As we approach the new season, (first match B team v Hanham C on my birthday, 10th September) we have lost three players, but it looks as though we've gained enough to keep both teams going, James Chappell is back,(can those initials be a coincidence?) and I know I shouldn't say this, but I really think the B team have a decent chance of winning this season. It's a rather shrunken division 5, with only seven teams playing each other 3 times each, so here's hoping!

Graham