Barrow - van Riel Shield 2025

Ballarat Bendigo Challenge 2025 Report by N.Barrow

Ballarat Team: CM Declan Smith (1948), Sam Song (1641), Patrick Cook (1537), Kevin Perrin (1500), Paja Marko (1408), Vipin Jyani (1370), Lucas Ware (1293), Julian Laffey (928).

Bendigo Team (from): Ruari Coffey (1931), Nigel Barrow (1842), Leigh Healey (1698), David Lumsdon (1688), Max Mollard (1526), Caleb Sing, Cooper Coppolino, Ahaan Tadakamadla,  Andre Sardone and Yohan Shetty

Ballarat brought 8 players, to Bendigo's 10. Yohan Shetty and Andre Sardone played on board 9, with Andre notionally representing Ballarat. Andre won the game, but only the top 8 results count to the team match scores.

Ballarat got out to an early lead after Cooper Coppolino found himself a knight down in the endgame against Lucas Ware, which his opponent made good use of in a kingside attack.

Bendigo clawed a point back when Max Mollard built up a strong attack against Paja Marko and soon broke through.

Ballarat’s Vipin Jyani won the exchange (rook for knight) against Caleb Sing, and then had to weather a storm of threats, but was up to the defensive challenge, scoring another point for Ballarat.

Julian Laffey for Ballarat and Ahaan Tadakamadla had a very even game, finally agreeing to a draw in a tricky queen and pawn ending.

Sam Song played well against Bendigo’s board 2, Nigel Barrow, building up a positional advantage before his higher rated opponent bailed out to force a draw by perpetual check.

Leigh Healey had built up an overwhelming attack against Ballarat Team Captain Patrick Cook’s French Defence on board 3, breaking through on the kingside for a decisive victory.

On board 4, Ballarat’s Kevin Perrin had a crazy game against David Lumsdon, with David pushing his pawns into Kevin’s pieces in the opening, cramping his opponent and gaining space at the cost of his own development.  David wound up winning a rook for several pawns in the ensuing melee, and his material advantage soon began to pay dividends as he found a way to force a simplification threatening to win even more material which caused Kevin to resign.

This left Bendigo up 4-3, with everything hinging on the final game to finish on board one between newly crowned Bendigo Club Champion, Ruari Coffey and Ballarat’s Candidate Master, Dylan Smith.

Declan had seemingly survived a strong attack from Ruari and emerged the exchange ahead, however, Ruari was able to generate threats with a powerful pawn on g7 right next to his opponent’s king, backed up by a dark squared bishop on f6. When Ruari retreated his light squared bishop to b1, and threatened to bring his queen to the light squared diagonal to threaten mate, there was little Declan could do to defend against the threat, and chose to resign, to the applause of the remaining spectators.

This is the first outright win for Bendigo since the Interclub matches were re-started in 2018.