Not since I joined the club four years ago have our teams ever managed to lose every match played in a week (except for those odd weeks with only one or two matches). This week, though, we managed it without any trouble at all.

Monday was especially disappointing. There's no doubt that the defeats suffered by WN7 (4–0 against West Bridgford 2) and WNB (3–1 against Foremarke A) were always likely, given the strength of the opposition, but WN5's match against Gambit 4 was a toss-up that we could have won. Unfortunately, the coin landed the wrong way: 3–2 to Gambit.

The Handicap KO match between WN Daydream and Radcliffe Rapscallions was another close thing. Losing two of our original three players on the day of the match was just typical of what happens when your luck is out. Nevertheless, Lucien Holliday stepped in at the last minute to score 2/3, and if only Phil Burley's flag hadn't fallen in the last game (when he was a queen up), we'd have tied the match and gone through on tie-break. Instead, Radcliffe won 5½–3½.

On to the away matches. The fixture list handed WN1 and WN3 matches on the same night against University 1 and University 3. But of course we've hit the run-up to Christmas, and it seems like everyone has a concert or play to rehearse and both teams were desperately scrabbling around for players. Consequently, WN1 were thumped 4–1 (nice win by David), while WN3 were edged out 3–2 by University 3. John Collins overturned a 40 point grading deficit to win his game, but the rest of the University team were just too strong.