Congratulations to Tom O’Gorman, who played board 1 for Oxford University in the annual Varsity match against Cambridge this past Saturday, and recorded a fine win against fellow FM Harry Grieve, to lead Oxford to a 5½ – 2½ win.
Final position
[Click to replay the full game.]
It’s unfortunate that Ryan-Rhys Griffiths was taken ill and had to drop out: he had been scheduled to play on board 1 for Cambridge. Has it ever happened before that two Irish players have faced each other on board 1 of this illustrious fixture? I think it would have been an historic first.
Tom O’Gorman is not the first Irish player to play on board 1 for Oxford, but he is the first in a long time: Horace Plunkett did the same in 1875, 1876, and 1877, and Richard Whieldon Barnett followed in 1887 and 1888.
For Cambridge, John Drew Roberts played board 1 in 1885, C. H. O’D. Alexander in 1931 and 1932, Brian Kelly in 1999, Ryan-Rhys Griffiths in 2017 and Conor Murphy in 2018.
The full lists can be found at the pages of Oxford and Cambridge players at BritBase, part of a very detailed series of pages on this event.