Horsham 2 hold Brighton 1 to a draw

Last Thursday, Horsham 2 headed down to Brighton to play Brighton 1. After a journey down to the coast - I need to get back in the swing of travelling to other clubs! – Horsham 2 were ready and raring to go. Unfortunately, Brighton’s board 2 was missing. After 45 minutes, they put a substitute in, who Peter then comfortably outplayed by simplifying into a king endgame where his king was master of the board whilst his opponent was left on the edge. This led to his opponent's king being knocked sideways and gave us a 1-0 lead.
Next to finish was Rob on board 4, playing in his first match for the club. Rob played the Caro-Kann and was caught off guard in the Fantasy variation. He managed to hold back White's aggressive plans to head into a rook-knight versus rook-bishop endgame. Rob's opponent then offered a draw and after carefully looking at the team score, he accepted, leaving us 1.5-0.5 up.
Third to finish was Dix on board 1, up against Luke Rutherford. Dix built up a space advantage on the queenside in an English opening only for Luke to cut behind Dix's pawns and win one of them with some sharp tactics. Luke then carefully sidestepped all of Dix's traps to bring the game home for Brighton, leaving the scoreline 1.5-1.5.
This left my game on board 3 as the last game going. I was on the white side of the modern line of the Yugoslav attack against Paul Batchelor's Sicilian Dragon. A messy position followed with both players having chances. On move 30 I missed a knight-fork/sac, wherein if I took the knight I would have been mated in three, so glumly I accepted the exchange down. My position then went from bad to worse as my attempts to get a perpetual were calmly rebuffed and Paul managed to promote a pawn, leading to me with a queen against a queen and rook. At this point, with the match in the balance, both our times low, and with nothing to lose, I threw two connected passed pawns up the board, with my king shepherding them. I then gave up my queen for his rook, but with my pawns now on the 6th and 7th he had no choice but to keep checking, leading to a threefold repetition on move 85.
The final match score was 2-2, a well-earned draw for Horsham 2 against Brighton 1, who no doubt will be pushing for the title this season.

Full match card: https://ecflms.org.uk/lms/node/92344