With the finale of the Armstrong Cup on this weekend (not to mention the thorny issue of the National Club Championship and European Club Cup the topic of renewed controversy), it’s time for a post with some reminiscences of club chess from yesteryear.
In 1985 Dundrum won the Armstrong for the first and only time (1984-85 season). I was playing board 1, would you believe, and this competition featured my last competitive games, as I left for California in early September that year and haven’t played a game since. I have only the haziest recollections of that season, and certainly no games. Nice to go out on a high note, though!
As a result of the Armstrong win, our captain David Drakeford entered the team for the European Club Cup. (What about the National Club Championship, you ask? Records are scarce and I’m fairly sure I skipped the event myself, but it seems Dundrum finished second. In those days this made no difference to anything, though, so the entry was accepted.)
The team was drawn away to MTK Budapest, a dream draw against one of the strongest teams in the competition. In the event they rested a couple of their players, e.g. Susan Polgar, but the team that played was strong enough: board 1 Lajos Portisch, then rated sixth in the world, GM Forintos board 2, and GM Lengyel board 3. The format was at that time a knockout series of matches (six boards, two rounds).
The match was scheduled for September, so I wasn’t able to play myself, being already in California by that time. But Eugene Curtin was home from Rhode Island on holiday, so played board 1 in my stead. Since Eugene was then Irish champion (joint with Mark Orr), having also won the Irish championship outright the previous year, this was an excellent trade for Dundrum. I hasten to add, since the ICU web site and LCU Blog are filled with talk of ‘ringers’, that Eugene had had a long association with Dundrum, extending back at least ten years.
Dundrum lost 9½-2½, with each player except one losing one game and drawing the other. I recall hearing that the team was quite happy with this result.
OlimpBase has a brief account of the match, showing the overall match result, and Eugene Curtin’s results, along with one of his games, his loss to Portisch. No other Irish players are listed and no other games are available, and ChessBase’s “Big Database 2012” (5,000,000+ games) also contains just this one game.
However there is some more information! I found an article on the match in Magyar Sakkélet, 1985 p. 396, giving full results, plus one more full game (Lengyel-McHugh) and an extended portion of another (Varnusz-Drakeford).
In a later post I’ll upload these as playable games, along with the full article. In the meantime here is the full table of results, at least as given by Magyar Sakkélet (I have an idea that it was Brian MacRéamoinn who lost both games, not John Griffin, and I think I recall seeing a report in Fiacla Fichille about the match; to be verified):
The Dundrum team was Eugene Curtin, John Griffin, Kevin McHugh, David Drakeford, Brian MacRéamoinn, and Ivan Gormally.
[Updated March 21, 2014: link to OlimpBase report corrected (see comment from Kevin Burke).]
Hi Sean,
Your article on Dundrum versus MTK Budapest certainly brought back memories! Thank you for posting it.
Putting aside my zimmer frame for the moment, I should point out that it was yours truly who let the side down by losing both games. The table given is fully correct.
With Best Wishes
John Griffin
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You’ve the wrong link on Olimpbase btw; the full team list is at this link – http://www.olimpbase.org/1986c/1986fa01.html
The other link is a slight error on the Olimpbase site, abbreviating Dundrum as instead DUMD of DNDR. Three of the games are on the site.
Had no idea about this match though! It appears from looking at the MTK team in the first round (v Dundrum) and the second round that maybe Polgar wasn’t rested; she possibly wasn’t strong enough to make the team! She played against Anderlecht in the next round, and her rating shows she’s lower-rated than the six that played against Dundrum.
Thanks: I’ve corrected the OlimpBase link in the post above.
There is one other error in the OlimpBase report: David Drakeford’s name is given incorrectly. (I think the club’s name was abbreviated as “DUMD” as Dundee already had “DUND”; but I see it has now been changed to “DNDR”.)
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