Kingston become inaugural holders of the Alan Marshall Memorial Shield
Don’t get too excited. Not a blow has been struck in anger yet in the new season, which for the Kingston club begins with a tough away trip to Streatham in the first round of the Alexander Cup on Tuesday 1 October. But we do have a new trophy – the Alan Marshall Memorial Shield, awarded by the Thames Valley League to the winners of division 1. The photograph above shows me receiving the newly minted shield from Ealing’s Alastair Johnstone (right), a senior Thames Valley official of long standing.
The shield replaces a rather unassuming little cup which never quite caught the magnitude of winning division 1 and seeing off the likes of Hammersmith, Ealing, Richmond and Wimbledon. The new trophy is a great improvement and honours Alan Marshall, who died last year. Alan was a member at Harrow Chess Club for more than 40 years, long-time secretary of the Thames Valley League, and a dedicated and much-loved servant of the game. Naming the trophy after him is a worthy tribute and will make the winning of division 1 even more coveted.
The Thames Valley League was founded in 1947, and a plaque on the back of the new shield lists (in challengingly small type) all the previous winners. The first winners were the Teddington-based National Physical Laboratory – a club which, as far as I know, no longer exists; it certainly doesn’t field teams in the Thames Valley League. Kingston (then called Kingston and Thames Valley) triumphed in 1948/49 and 1949/50, and we have won the first-division title on four occasions since. We were champions in 2022/23 and 2023/24, and a hat-trick of titles would be tremendous … but we must not tempt fate.
Richmond and Twickenham have been the most successful club overall, but Ealing, Wimbledon and Surbiton have all enjoyed periods of dominance (one of the attractions of local club chess is how the pendulum swings) and Hammersmith have been powerful in recent years, winning the title in 2018/19 and 2021/22.
The National Physical Laboratory is not the only past first-division winner which no longer features in the league. Pinner, Hayes and Harlington, Slough, Acton and Thames TV have also fallen by the wayside. Sic transit gloria mundi. Or do I mean Memento mori? Either way, it happens to many chess clubs. (Put down roots, folks, and don’t rely on one or two overworked officials or this too will be your fate.) What fun it must have been to play at Thames TV. More glamorous surely than a trip to Hounslow (nothing personal, Hounslow – we love visiting you!)
The engraver has made an error on the plaque, showing Kingston as winners alongside Hammersmith in 2018/19. But we weren’t even in division 1 that year – we were champions of the second division. Before the pandemic – a watershed in the history of the Kingston club as well as in all our lives – we tended to bounce back and forth between divisions 1 and 2. Only in the past few years have we been able to mount a consistent challenge for the title.
We hope to continue vying for the crown (or, rather, the shield) with the big guns for a while, but we know that the glory days will pass and we will find ourselves back in the chasing pack, though we fervently hope to avoid the fate of Slough, Pinner and Thames TV. Gritty long-term survival – we celebrate our 150th anniversary next year – means more than glittering short-term success. Better to be a planet than a meteor.
Stephen Moss, Kingston club captain
