Saturday 07 November 2009

The first round of National Junior League matches, London North Region, was held at the Ellenborough Club, Enfield on Saturday 7 November. The Chelmsford Table Tennis Club have again only entered one team in the League.

Sixteen teams were divided into two Divisions of eight, teams playing nine sets for each match. The format was that two matches would be played on three tables for each of the three rounds of matches.  The Chelmsford team were placed in Division 1.

Their first match was against Urban Progress A, a team who turned out to be well out of their depth in Division 1 and whose players at the end of the day had not registered a win between them. Matthew Davis, Robert Shrimpton and James Austin comfortably completed a 9-0 win, all matches 3-0, the opponents number three player only picking up fourteen points in total from our team.

Their next match against Morpeth was a much much tougher one and in the end could have resulted in a win for either team. Not a good start with Matthew losing 3-0 to Joshua James and Robert 3-1 to David Ha. James got the better of Simon Ha -7, 5, 3, 9 but Robert and Matthew both lost 9 in the fourth to Joshua and Simon respectively for the team to go 4-1 down. The fightback came with James beating David 7, -8, 11, -9, 7, Robert beating Simon, ranked 60 places above him, 4,7,5 and James coming back from 2-1 down to win the fifth set 11-2 to square the match. Alas thirty seconds later on the other table Matthew failed to get the last two points in the fourth from Joshua to take his match in to a fifth set.

Their last match of the day was against Southend and what a good match this was. Alas our players do need to learn how to accurately smash a ball at crucial stages of matches. The opening matches were shared, Matthew losing to Owen Warren 7, -9, 10, 9 whilst Robert came back from the loss of the first two games 10, 10 to Sam Chesher to win 10, 9, 6, Sam being ranked some 140 places above him. The next two matches were also shared, James losing 3-1 to Leon Smart but Matthew beat Sam 3-1. James then had a cracking match with Owen but somehow contrived to lose the match when leading 8-3 and then 10-9 in the fifth. On the other table Robert also went down in the fifth to Leon. James, after losing the first to Sam 12-10 went on to win 8, 7, 9 and thus their highest ranked player lost all three of his matches. Matthew then lost 3-2 to Leon. In the last match Robert cracked under the pressure from Owen. Leading 9-11, 13-11, 14-12, and 8-5 Robert then lost the next four points, won the next two but couldn’t convert the match point to lose that game 12-10 and the fifth 11-8 for a 6-3 loss. A match where no one had a 3-0 win and Chelmsford lost four of the matches that went to five. Conversion of the match points would have resulted in a win.

The second round of matches is on Saturday 28 November 2009 when there will be four matches to play.

Current Table Position

Finally the players need to thank Coach Ryan Pitt and assistant Ian Austin whose advise in their first match was by courtesy of raised thumb signals through the windows from the refreshment area as they were playing their match on the far corner table where access was limited by other matches in play

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Report written by Arthur Clark
Junior Match Secretary for Chelmsford & District Table Tennis League