Wallington v Kingston, Lauder Trophy quarter-final match played at Wallington United Reformed Church on 5 November 2025

There was a scary moment before the start of this match when the Kingston players entered the playing room and found our very own Peter Lalić chilling with the Wallington players. Fortunately – for me at least – he was only there to watch the opening stages at his most local club. For Kingston second-team players to face him for  a fourth time in six weeks would have been tough. There would have been room for him within the rating limit of 10,500 for the Wallington team, which had no one over 1700.

Jon Eckert, Rob Taylor and Robin Kerremans on boards 4 to 6 all won fairly quickly. Jon soon went a piece up, and Rob’s classical play with Black squashed his opponent with a big centre which left no room for the white knights to get out of the way of the rest of the army. Robin Kerremans played the English, despite which his opponent had a slight edge for a while. But Black’s advantage was short-lived, and Robin quickly turned the tables to win the black queen in the course of a mating attack.

John Foley (pictured above) had sacrificed an exchange in the style of Tigran Petrosian in Monday’s league game against Ashtead 1, and now sacrificed another one, this time in the style of Paul Morphy in the famous Opera House game against the Duke of Brunswick and Count Isouard.

I had a much less clear-cut game with Black against Robert Davies on board 1. I had a slight edge almost throughout, but the engine reveals that the advantage was much less than I had thought until my opponent slipped up in the tactics.

Xavier Cowan, who made his Kingston debut only on Monday, was last to finish, with Black against Daniel Luck on board 3. Daniel must be one of the younger club officials in the Surrey League, and is already the Wallington fixture secretary and their match captain for the Lauder and two Surrey league teams, so he has taken on a lot and we wish him well. Xavier has not taken long to figure out that exchange sacrifices are the club trademark.

So the result was what tennis followers would call a bagel (6-0), not surprising given the rating difference, but we have already seen this season, for instance in the recent first-team match against Wimbledon, that in games with a high tactical element almost anyone can go wrong. The Lauder Trophy semi-final will be an away match against the winner of Chessington v Epsom, and must be played by the end of February.

Peter Andrews is Kingston captain in the Lauder Trophy