THE SILVER KNIGHT
Inscribed on the trophy:
THE RAYNER MEMORIAL TROPHY TO PERPETUATE THE MEMORY OF James Rayner, CAPTAIN, LEEDS CHESS CLUB, 1886, 1887 AND 1897. THE MEANING OF THE TROPHY Traditionally awarded to the highest individual scorer in the Woodhouse Cup. Not the best player, you will note. The highest scorer. The top board often wins the trophy, but more often than not it goes to the board four or five who turns up for every match and slogs away doggedly throughout the season. It's as much about reliability, consistency, and being part of the team as it is about outright brilliance. To win the trophy once suggests you were a dedicated member of the club for a decade or more, reached a high standard of play, and had one exceptional year. Two wins suggests you might have wasted your life on a stupid game. Three wins and you are among the club's immortals, Addingley, Povey, Haygarth, and the great CW Jeffery himself. Well done! |
James Rayner, (1859-98)
The founding fathers were getting old by the 1880s and the club needed a new generation to take over the reigns. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. James Rayner was top board and captain when the club won its first Woodhouse Cup title in 1887.
He came from a humble background, had a middle-ranking career in teaching and a failed business behind him, ended up living back home with an aged parent, before dying young at the age of thirty-nine. A modest and unassuming man. Put him behind a chess board or in charge of a team, however, and it was game on. He seems to have been a steady 2200 for most of his short life. A very strong player and committed club man, he was perhaps best known for his chess problems column in the British Chess Magazine. You can just tell he was one of those people who lives for chess and sees no point existing without it. There's a little bit of James Rayner in all of us. A stalwart of the club in late-Victorian times, more about him on the AUSPICIOUS MEMBERS page. The club thought enough of him to immortalise him by commissioning the beautiful Silver Knight - or Rayner Memorial - trophy. In the old minute books, it is often referred to as "the captain's trophy".
Full Biography
(By Yorkshire's History GM, Steve Mann) |