(Last updated: 25.09.2002)
The North West Eagles is a chess team drawn from players from all over North-West England (and nowadays sometimes beyond!). The NW Eagles are founder members of the 4NCL, by far the most prestigious team tournament in the British Isles. The team was (except to a limited extent in the very first 4ncl season) entirely amateur and, apart from the odd (very odd!) FM, untitled. (This may now be about to change a little in order to ensure we get promotion to the 1st division and then stay there.) As such the Eagles battled manfully to remain in the top flight of the 4NCL since the inception of the league in 1994, increasingly against the odds as more and more teams became partly or even fully professional, hiring the top Grand Masters in the country and further afield, including in recent seasons the likes of Morozevich, Korchnoi, Adams and Short. It was indeed two seasons ago (1999-2000) that the dreaded drop finally befell the Eagles.
The team was hoping to bounce straight back to reclaim its rightful position in the 4NCL's premier division, but sadly a catastrophic loss against one of the weaker teams of the division on the final weekend together with an earlier loss against the to be relegated Bristol 2 (largely the result of two defaults) conspired to prevent this happy outcome. Although we firmly believed we were more than capable of putting it right this season just finished (2001-2), to be honest we underperformed even more than last season. We actually had a chance at the final weekend to snatch an undeserved third promotion spot after our nearest rivals, South Wales Dragons, began to falter themselves, but we managed to blow that too with some unbelievably bad chess (see reports, rounds 9-11).
The season finished on something of a high, however, when we steamrollered our way through the playoffs to gain entry of an Eagles second team to the third division of the 4ncl next season (2002-3). This was an indispensable element in the development of our future plans, allowing us to build up a much stronger and deeper squad, which we have already done with the injection of much-needed new faces and new blood. Next season we will have a team strong enough for the first division in the second and a team strong enough for the second division in the third. Therefore the aim is to ensure that we achieve a double promotion and teams in the first and second divisions for the following season (2003-4).
This website will report on the progress of the teams as they attempt to achieve the double promotion mentioned above. There will be comprehensive coverage of all the Eagles' results and games together with annotations, comments, analysis, views and whatever else I decide to include. I shall be personally responsible for the contents of this website, so any comments, suggestions, contributions, ideas or abuse should be directed solely to myself.
Charlie Kennaugh(Game notation can be viewed in plain text format by opening the pgn file in a text editor or word processor such as NotePad or WordPad.)
Articles
Annotated games
2002-2003 season's fixtures
NW Eagles Squad Season 2002-2003
Official 4NCL Website
BCM's 4NCL Website
Twic
BCM
BCF
Chess Cafe
Club Kasparov
Chess Oracle
Ben Hague's Website
Metropolitan Club Website