Division 3 Bishops – Wessex A – Round 9 – May 2nd 2026

Wessex A came up against one of the “bottom 2 / relegation zone” teams who still fielded a useful line-up with 3 x 2000+ players.

Wins from Olli, Christian & Bill plus draws from David and Roger saw us take the match 4-2.

Division 3 Bishops – Wessex A – Round 10 – May 3^rd 2026

Next Wessex A came up against the other “bottom 2 / relegation zone” team who still had 4 x 1900+ graded players.

Wins from Christian & Roger plus draws from David, Olli, Mircea and Bill saw us win the match comfortably again – this time with no losses.

Division 3 Bishops – Wessex A – Round 11 – May 4^th 2026

Bank Holiday Monday saw us take on one of the “promotion chasers” – Wotton Hall – wins from Christian (who scored 3 from 3 this weekend) and Roger (who scored an impressive 2.5 from 3) plus a draw from Olli against a 2229 saw us lose very narrowly.

Zack Norris, their very strong board 1, last played Wessex two years ago graded 1608, yet even then managed to draw with Roger De C who far out-graded him – gaining 745 grading points in two seasons is pretty spectacular! He is,or will become, 13 years old this year so is “one to watch”.

The final table shows Wessex A in 5^th place, helped by our ruthless beating up of the bottom 6 teams against whom we scored 6 wins from 6 ! With only two teams guaranteed promotion I suspect we will be in Div 3 again next year.

Division 4 – Wessex B – Round9 & 10 – May 2nd & May 3^rd2026

Rounds 9 & 10 saw Wessex B involved in one of the baffling 3-way matches – only 2 people understand how these work and I haven’t met either of them!

Ashfield 2 slightly out-graded us and a win from Jamie plus draws from myself & Tom saw us go down 4-2

In the other match we out-graded Iceni 2 and edged the match with wins from Tim, Tom & George plus a draw from Jamie.

Division 4 – Wessex B – Round 11 – May 4^th 2026

Monday saw a “normal match” where we finished the season in some style, beating a higher graded team, Oxford 3, via wins from Tim & Tom, plus draws from Jamie, Simon & Ashraf.

Wessex B finished in 13^th place from 29 teams and the Swiss system worked reasonably well so we got a range of opposition, largely avoiding the top end teams and the bottom end teams of the league – see below.

With a recent influx of new players, including several from my own club, Fareham, we may look at running a Wessex C team next season.

Sadly Mircea is taking a timeout from 4ncl after 3 seasons and 27 games for Wessex so a gap has opened up in our Wessex A team.

#Stats_time

Three of our current squad have now played 100+ Wessex matches

200 – Allan Pleasants

167 – Keith Gregory

149 – Roger De Coverly

They all have some way to go to overhaul Martin Simons who has played 219 matches, although none since 2020 when he took “early retirement” from 4ncl world.

Keith Gregory – 4NCL Wessex Captain – May 9^th2026