On 11th January our Harvey Cup team played Dartford and won by 3.5 - 2.0, making the half-point penalty that Dartford conceded for being overgraded irrelevant to the result. Don Chapman gave us a good start by drawing with a much higher graded player, but all the other games apart from Ian McAllan’s looked bad. However, Gary Sharp held the draw and Dave Helps, who had been a pawn down, equalized and then took advantage of a blunder to win. With Ian McAllan winning the pressure was off Lee Brockwell, who after an up-and-down struggle, accepted a draw offer when both players had less than a minute left.

Ian McAllan