I thought I would write a little summary of the TV Divison 1 team’s season 2010-11.

Firstly, let’s have a look at the Division 1 League table:

So we finished fourth, in mid-table. I think this was a very respectable performance by the team as my impression was that the strength of the league has increased over the last year or so and there are few easy matches between the top six sides. Relative to last year, when we also finished fourth, we ended up with half a match point more.

As well as the league we also competed in the Thames Valley knock-out competition where we were eliminated in the semi-final away to Staines, who fielded a far stronger team than they had in the league for the majority of the season. Staines went on to beat Ealing in the final!

I thought I would show you how we all got on individually and so have produced a results summary for each player who played for my team as follows:-

Click Here for the statistics table.

As with all such analyses one has to be a little careful in drawing conclusions where the sample size is small however I will use a little bit of captain’s licence to suggest a few “awards”

Most loyal player award goes to Stef Bruzzi for playing in 14 matches. Thanks to Stef for his fantastic support!

Player with most wins award goes jointly to Nick Pelling and Ian Henderson with seven each. Great effort guys!

Player with most losses award would go to your captain with six! When he handed over the captaincy to me last year Paul Durrant told me it would be worth minus 10 rating points and he was about right. Graded 181, I produced a 169 performance for my team!

Mr Solid award goes to Stef Bruzzi who drew eight games out of his fourteen. Do not mess with Stef’s French Defence!

Highest % scorer award goes to the former captain, Paul Durrant, with 100% who clearly enjoyed being unburdened by passing me the armband! Recalling my earlier point about small sample sizes, and the fact that Paul’s 100% was over two games, I would like to give a seriously honourable mention to Edgar Flacker for a great 75% in his first season for the club. Well done Paul and Edgar!

Highest grading performance award again goes to Paul Durrant for his 204 in two games! You will see I have included in the table a statement of our opponent’s average grades to put the performances in context. Given this and the sample size issues I would like to give seriously honourable mentions to both Nick Pelling and Edgar Flacker who each produced a 200 performance. Well done Paul, Nick and Edgar!

Finally, the Punched Above His Weight award goes to Michael Nightingale who, graded 151, produced a 177 performance for my team as well as an Immortal Game! Well done Michael!

I haven’t mentioned everyone yet and that would be remiss of me. I would like to thank each and every one of you for your loyalty and support last season, which I really appreciated. Playing as well as you can and in as many matches as we have, while trying to lead very busy lives, is not easy and you all deserve huge credit for your efforts.

I am also proud that we did not default a single game and would like to acknowledge the efforts that you all put in to communicate issues early to me and especially to thank those who were kind enough to volunteer to be reserves for some matches so that I always had someone to call upon if unexpected issues arose late in the day.

What of the future?

My feeling is that we have the potential to improve our league position and our individual performances. This applies especially to your captain of course but there were a few green shoots of recovery towards the end of the season that make me feel optimistic about my own situation!

If each of us could improve, say, 10 points and we were able to consistently field our best players then I think we would be a strong outfit. Whether we could challenge the powerhouse of Ealing on a consistent basis, I don’t know, as we have a relatively small pool of players but I would love us to try!

I think there are two things to think about if we want to climb that league:

1. Get the best players out as often as possible.

That’s really up to us all and I recognize that life has a tendency of disrupting great plans but I will try my very best as captain to facilitate this aim, with your assistance.

2. Improvement.

Whether it’s improving your clock handling, the way you manage psychologically when you are faced with something unexpected, the way you calculate tactics, your positional judgement or your knowledge of certain opening(s), ending(s), your approach to draw offers etc, etc I would suggest that there are areas we all can get better at (my own list is extensive of course!).

My suggestion is to figure out how much time you have available, identify your top priority improvement item(s) and work on them over the summer for next season (and then keep working through the season – try to learn something meaningful from every game). I would also strongly encourage you to collaborate with other players at the club. There is a serious knowledge base amongst us all and we ought to be sharing this amongst each other where it makes sense to do so. It’s a team as well as an individual game!

Practice to avoid rust is also very important and I am really impressed that many of us are competing in tournaments over the summer which I hope will pay dividends at the start of next season.

By the way, if you have ideas about how I can improve my performance as your captain or comments on any of the above I would welcome hearing those very much.

Finally, when all is said and done, we are playing to enjoy ourselves and so we should never lose sight of that.

Conclusion

Once again, thanks to each and every one of you for your efforts last season. I look forward to us doing even better next season and wish you all a great summer until then!

Paul Shepherd 23 July 2011