Southport Table Tennis Club helping to regenerate table tennis in Southport

The juniors of Southport ‘D’ celebrated their win over Formby Holy Trinity ‘C’ in Tuesday’s Gunson Plate final, pictured here with coach and manager, Paul Lunan.

The match was keenly contested, but played in a very friendly atmosphere, and both teams had plenty to smile about afterwards. First Division team Formby HT ‘C’ gave away a 180-point advantage to their Division 3 opponents, and such a margin proved too great for the more experienced team against the agility and confidence of the youngsters.

At the half way stage, Formby had clawed back only 70 points and still needed to recover a further 110 from the remaining 4 games to draw level. Southport ‘D’ had not looked like dropping this many points at any stage, and indeed dropped only another 40 points to give a winning margin of 70.

The match was played throughout in a great spirit, and it was a treat to see so many of the parents there to support their lads.

Ray Hibbs kindly gave up his evening to officiate and to umpire all the games. Both teams were indebted to him and to St Teresa’s for once again allowing the use of their club for the venue.

Tonight’s Gunson Cup match between Southport ‘C’ and Argyle ‘C’ (+180pts) finished in a Draw, and will be replayed next Wednesday at Argyle.

Beginning with an advantage of 180 points, the young division 3 team needed to stay within 4 or 5 points per game, on average, of their division 2 opponents to have a chance of winning the match. Angus Taylor, the Argyle captain/manager chose the two number ones for the first encounter and it was soon clear why. Star of the show was young Mike McCormack, doing much more than staying close – in fact beating Alan Nolan by 46 points to 45. What a start!

On the other table, Tom Banton, after losing the first game 9-11 to Nathan Thistlethwaite, woke up and eventually won by 53 points to 26 to restore some semblance of normality. Most of the other games went more or less as expected, and we were then left with the final match – Tom Taylor against Mike McCormack. This was already in play as we added up the scores, and although we knew the scores were going to be close, we hadn’t told Tom and Mike. Mike finally won this contest 49 to 48, and a last reckoning produced a final result of 419 points each.

Never having been in this position before, we looked up the handbook (rule 32c) to find that the only way of deciding the winner was to replay the match at the opponents’ venue, and if that is also a draw to continue replaying matches until a winner emerges (rule 32d). We could be in for a long winter!

Details of the match can be downloaded from here.

Thanks to Angus Taylor for bringing a very friendly team of promising juniors and well done to Argyle – we look forward to the [first?] replay next week.

The ‘C’ team finds itself in a completely different league this season, or at least a different Division!

After 3 league matches and the first round of the Anon Cup, the record is not one that stands much scrutiny: played 4, won 0, drawn 0, lost 4. In the league, we have won only 3 sets out of 30, with Tom Banton involved in all three of them (2 singles wins and a doubles). And we haven’t even played any of the top teams yet!

In the Anon Cup, a 6-0 result was again a fair reflection of the strengths of the 2 sides, with Formby HT ‘D’ making good use of the net cord and table edges! Seriously, though, if they get more nets than their opponents, it’s probably because they are able to play the ball closer to the net in the first place, so good luck to them.

One consolation, though not much of one – at least we’re in the Plate competition!