I’d like to begin my review of last season by congratulating two of the more prominent players in our League, Stephen Gordon and Jeff Horner, on their exceptional achievements this season.

I was lucky enough to be in Great Yarmouth for the second week of the British, and to see Stephen come second in the championships. Stephen was the highest placed English person and therefore became English Champion. Stephen is, of course, well on his way to becoming a grandmaster, which should shortly give us something else to celebrate.

If Stephen will forgive me, I have to say that I took even more pleasure in Jeff’s achievement of gaining the IM title. In chess, as in many walks of life, the focus is often on youth, and it is all too easy to be made to feel that you are wasting your time if you haven’t become a GM by the time you leave school. Jeff has reminded us that even those of us hurtling towards middle-age can still aspire to improve and make progress.

As always, though, the news wasn’t entirely positive during the season. For me, the low point was the loss of Mike O’Hara. Mike was not only one of our League’s strongest players, but also made a substantial contribution to chess away from the board. He was also very good company and will be missed for a long time to come.

On the national scene, the big news of the season was the resignation of Martin Regan as Chief Executive of the English Chess Federation. This was disappointing as we were working with Martin on a number of projects, and I felt that Manchester had a genuine supporter at the top of the ECF with Martin there.

So, what has the MCF done this Season?

Perhaps the highest profile achievement of the Season was to help with the creation of a brand new local tournament, the Manchester Rapidplay. This proved to be popular and successful, with a superb venue at Eastlands.  Planning for next year is already well under way. This tournament may prove to have significance well beyond being just another tournament, as it marked the start of our relationship with the Sport 4 Life organisation. We continue to explore how we can take this relationship forward, but strong links with organisations such as this can only be helpful to us, and, we hope, to them too.

It is certainly the case that, if we harbour any ambitions of bringing a major tournament to Manchester, then it will only be possible through partnerships such as this.

I’d like to thank Mick Norris for liaising with Sport 4 Life on our behalf; his help has been invaluable.

Turning to other matters, in my report last year, I identified three areas on which I wanted us to focus:  the promotion of our Federation, League and clubs through better publicity; the expansion of our League, particularly by making it less intimidating for newer and weaker players; and increasing the help that we can give to the development of junior players.

As I mentioned last year, the main tool for chess promotion is now the internet. Any players new to the area and looking for a club will almost certainly just go the net and Google ’ Manchester Chess’. It is therefore critical that we have an attractive, informative and accessible MCF website.

It’s no secret that, this time last year, our website was very poor and didn’t serve our purposes. Thanks to the work done by Stuart Charlton, we now have a website widely acknowledged as excellent.

I have to say, though, that, when I mentioned this in a recent Council meeting, the response was mixed. There was a feeling that, although there are many positive things we can rightly say about the site, it doesn’t yet do the main thing that we ourselves, as local chess players, want it to do, which is to provide timely information about team results and league standings.

I fully accept and appreciate this. As a regular player myself last season, I also wanted to see how my teams were doing, and I am sorry that we were unable to provide this.

The webmaster is, however, reliant upon others to provide him with the information to enable him to keep the website up to date with this sort of information, and, unfortunately, this information was not always forthcoming last season.

It is well known, I think, that our Results Secretary had serious and prolonged problems with his computer last season, which led to severe delays in processing results. Without the information from the Results Secretary, Stuart , in turn, was delayed in updating this part of our website.

This was as frustrating for him as for anyone else, and it is unreasonable and unfair to criticise him personally for these delays.

A number of people have asked me why no one else within the MCF was willing to help our Results Secretary resolve his computer problems, so that the results could be processed quicker. Should we not have had a contingency plan in place?

Well, in fact, I was very pleased with both other MCF officers and members of Chorlton Chess Club, who offered to help, both by getting involved themselves and by offering the use of spare laptops. These offers were declined, the reason being that the time costs of bringing others into the process were thought to be greater than the benefits of their help. But, the offers were there, which I found very reassuring.

The final point I want to make about this is to assure you that all results were processed in time for us  to meet the 2007/08 ECF grading deadlines, so there is no reason to be concerned that these delays have led to any of our league results not being submitted for grading.

What of the second area, of expanding the League? Well, Council brought two proposals to last year’s AGM, designed to try to go some way to addressing this. Neither motion achieved the necessary 2/3 vote in favour and so both were defeated.

I did feel, though, that both votes were so close that it wouldn’t be appropriate for us to give up on looking at this area, and the result is the first motion on tonight’s agenda, proposing a fifth division, for teams of five players and with a grading limit.

In terms of the third area, juniors, it was never our intention to try to interfere with the excellent coaching work already done by both Manchester Junior Chess and Oldham 3Cs, amongst others. Instead, we simply wanted to look at what the MCF could do to either complement or supplement this coaching, and we took action on three fronts:

First, we made sure that both Manchester Junior Chess and the ECF were aware that we fully supported the applications by MJC to the John Robinson Fund, for financial help with several of its projects, and that we were willing to help support these projects ourselves.

Second, I discussed with the ECF the possibility of Manchester hosting a major national junior competition. This was an idea in which Martin Regan was very interested, and, unfortunately, seems to have lost momentum since Martin resigned as Chief Executive of the ECF.

Third, we wanted to explore the possibility of creating new county teams, which would have a strong emphasis on juniors. As we discussed last year, we felt that, for this to be successful, we would have to switch Unions, from the Midlands Counties Chess Union to the Northern Counties Chess Union, as otherwise the travelling involved would be prohibitive. The unfortunate reality of playing in the MCCU is that our u125 or u100 team could easily find itself playing away matches in, say, Coventry and Redditch, whilst finding that its home matches are won by default, with counties not wanting to travel to us.

I wrote to the NCCU President, Dave Farley, about us joining them and, subsequently, Andy Parry and I met with Dave and with Bill O’Rourke, to explore this possibility.

The meeting was very friendly and pleasant, but, unfortunately, negotiations weren’t as productive as I had hoped. The NCCU position is that Greater Manchester County cannot join the NCCU. This position is based upon their understanding of an agreement made in the mid-seventies between the NCCU, Lancashire County Chess Association, Greater Manchester County Chess Association and the BCF. This agreement, as Lancashire and the NCCU understand it, states that, for the purposes of NCCU competitions, all of the area within the palatine of Lancashire shall belong exclusively to Lancashire.

So, in other words, if we were to join the NCCU, we would have very little area, if any, from which to draw our teams.

Since this meeting, many people have asked me whether I have seen this agreement, whether I believe that the NCCU’s understanding is correct, or whether we have grounds to challenge it. My response is that I haven’t seen it, but we have to realise that our view is not really the point. We have asked to join the NCCU and have been turned down. The reasons for us being turned down are interesting, but the fact that we may not be fully convinced of the validity of the reasons doesn’t alter the fact that the NCCU has refused us. Even if we could provide an overwhelming argument that its understanding of the agreement is wrong, it still wouldn’t be obliged to take us.

The reality, of course, is that, in the agreement, there will inevitably be room for debate. The NCCU has already been threatened with legal action, should it change its view and decide to accept us. Given the unfortunate and expensive experiences of litigation in the seventies, the NCCU has signalled that it has no appetite to defend any such legal action and thus the chances of it being willing to review its decision would appear to be nil.

We must also take into account that there were additional views expressed at the meeting against the NCCU recognising us, such as the inclination of some players in the North of Greater Manchester to consider themselves as belonging to Lancashire.  So, even if it were possible for us to overturn the NCCU view on the agreement, this would simply bring these other views into play.

A compromise was, however, suggested to us. Under NCCU rules, a county may enter more than one team into each competition, and it was suggested that Lancashire could enter multiple teams into each section and give the additional teams to us. Technically, we would be playing as Lancashire B, Lancashire South, Lancashire-Manchester, or whatever structure was agreed, but for all practical purposes, these teams would be our teams, and would play as Manchester.

This idea, if agreed by Lancashire, would at least enable us to play in the NCCU, with the advantages that would bring, but there are also complications and disadvantages to the scheme.

This suggestion was discussed at Council and rejected, but, of course, it is for the AGM to make up its own mind.

My personal view is that it might be worth taking a year to reflect, to see how the changes in ECF personnel are received by the various Unions, particularly with rumblings of disengagement. Anyone wishing to explore NCCU membership in the future is, of course, entitled to bring their proposals to the 2009 AGM. In the meantime, Council can maintain a watching brief.

So, in summary, we have tried to make progress in the three areas I mentioned last year. There is much more to do, but we shouldn’t be disappointed by what has been done so far, and I thank all of the MCF officers and Council members for their extremely hard work this season.

Matthew Pollard

July 2008.