As well as falling leaves, autumn sees the start of treks to Midlands hotels to play the opening rounds of the 4NCL season. CSC/Kingston 1 began with matches against Barbican and Cheddleton, played at the Copthorne Hotel in Dudley on 1/2 November. CSC/Kingston’s second and third teams had been in action a fortnight earlier at the same venue, which was being used by the league for the first time. All three teams performed superbly and are well placed after the first two rounds of the 11-round season.

You have to hand it to Epsom – even their sixth (!) team plays a mean match. On paper this looked like a strong Kingston 4 team, playing in the Minor Trophy (effectively the fifth division of the Surrey League). But it wasn’t strong enough for the solid and experienced team Epsom brought to the Richard Mayo Centre, with the visitors prevailing 4-2.

Even though Kingston did not field our strongest side, we still outrated Hounslow by an average of 160 elo per board. Hence the final result of 5-1 was no surprise. As holders of the Thames Valley Knockout Cup, Kingston had a solid launch to the 2025/26 campaign.

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.