Grantham 1 is Winner of the NCA League

In the last match of Nottinghamshire Chess Association League Grantham-1 hosted the league runner-up and very strong team of Gambit-1. Team captain Nigel Birtwistle put together very strong lineup reinforced by Lincolnshire top player Chris Dorrington rated 225 ECF! After the fight Grantham won deservedly  3½:1½ and defended the Championship title which was gained 4 times in the row!
This is really remarkable achievement of the team which has gone through several personnel changes, when number of strong players have left the team. 
And the recognition must go to Nigel who kept the team together and always tried to find an optimal lineup and we all know how difficult this can be. On the top of that, all championship titles have been won under Nigel's captaincy. Well done Nigel!

Grantham-1		3½:1½	Gambit-1
Dorrington C	225	1:0	Barnes M	200
Mangione C	199	½:½	Mercs P	205
Birtwistle N	184	1:0	Swain J	167
Prior S	186	½:½	Hayward B	164
Payne N	180	½:½	Hunter S	169

I have failed so far to chase some more games, but to give you a flavour of the match here are at least two games, in the former Nigel himself won the point in Sicilian Defence and the later is Steve Prior's performance against Bryan Hayward. Let's have look at these games: