Rd 6 Great Ayton v Peterlee – Due to be played, Jan 4th, now re-arranged for Feb 29th

Peterlee Chess Club have made an appeal to the league organiser to cancel their match with Great Ayton chess club scheduled on the 4th January 2012. after an agreement to cancel between the two captains could not be agreed.

Peterlee Chess Club stated that they could not travel to Great Ayton on the 4th January, due to their captain (and main transport supplier) being unavailable for unavoidable personal reasons. and would have to default the match if the game could not be re-arranged.

Great Ayton Chess club believe that Peterlee are a sufficiently large club to to be able to field 5 players even if a key player was unavailable to provide transport.

My choices were:
1) Accept Peterlee’s appeal that they cannot send a team to Great Ayton on the 4th.
2) Speculate that Peterlee could field a team, and insist that the game is played on the 4th, which in effect awards the game to Great Ayton by default.

As Match organiser I cannot speculate and must accept that the Peterlee team captain’s reasons for wishing to cancel this game are correct , therefore I accept their appeal to cancel the game on the 4th on the grounds that the Peterlee team are unable to travel to Great Ayton due to transportation problems caused by personal reasons.

Peterlee are instructed to play this game on 29th February (a date on which Great Ayton can field a full strength team) , and the league organiser accepts the clause requested by Great Ayton that Peterlee do not play a stronger team than would have been the case on 4th January.

I will also instruct the CCA secretary to review the Rules on match cancellations and put forward some guidelines on what are and are not acceptable conditions for cancelling a match.

Steve Cole
League Organiser 1.1.2012