27-03-2014, 11:03 AM
There cannot be anyone in Scottish Chess who doesn't think that John Shaw and Dougie Bryson are completely honest and trustworthy members of the community. They bring important skills to bear and are exactly the sort of people we want as selectors. The fact that John Shaw stepped down over a potential conflict of interest when it was pretty obvious that he didn't need to merely reinforces the observation that he didn't need to!
The issue of captaincy is somewhat different because there are a number of possible approaches
1. A playing Captain
2. A strong Scottish Player who hasn't quite made the team (but may have previous Olympiad experience)
3. A very strong foreign GM to act as a coach
4. A CS official
Andy Muir tricks boxes 2 and 4, so is an obvious candidate. However, if as Andy says a number of the players don't support him then maybe there is a better candidate. Whilst ChessScotland might want to think about how and why a captain is appointed in future perhaps Andy Muir should seek a compromise this time. How about Jonathan Grant being made Captain of the Scottish Teams in Tromso and Andy Muir being made Vice-Captain with particular responsibility for the Open(Mens') Team. Any player unhappy with Andy would have to accept him and Andy would have to accept that if anything really contentious came up he could be over-ruled.
Compromise - nobody gets entirely what they want.
P.S. I am not privy to any private correspondence
The issue of captaincy is somewhat different because there are a number of possible approaches
1. A playing Captain
2. A strong Scottish Player who hasn't quite made the team (but may have previous Olympiad experience)
3. A very strong foreign GM to act as a coach
4. A CS official
Andy Muir tricks boxes 2 and 4, so is an obvious candidate. However, if as Andy says a number of the players don't support him then maybe there is a better candidate. Whilst ChessScotland might want to think about how and why a captain is appointed in future perhaps Andy Muir should seek a compromise this time. How about Jonathan Grant being made Captain of the Scottish Teams in Tromso and Andy Muir being made Vice-Captain with particular responsibility for the Open(Mens') Team. Any player unhappy with Andy would have to accept him and Andy would have to accept that if anything really contentious came up he could be over-ruled.
Compromise - nobody gets entirely what they want.
P.S. I am not privy to any private correspondence