Twenty four players signed up this year for the County Invitation Cup Competition and everyone turned up on the first night except for one player who had injured his hand doing some hedgelaying. Luckily an extra person had turned up thinking he had entered so the twenty four who were there were easily fitted into six teams to play in three matches.
The players are sorted according to the League’s final averages for the season and each team consists of two top and two bottom placed players.
On the first evening in each match the two top players play each other and the two bottom ones likewise and a set of doubles comes in the middle in which both teams have to play a top and bottom person.
To make it all more interesting the best of three games are played in each set but up to 21 points as in years gone by. As before, serves change every five points. The big difference in these matches is that everyone scores a point each time they reach a multiple of five points and every player is given a handicap, which is the score they start each game from. If Joe Smith is on 10 and Bill Jones on 12 that is where the scores start at the beginning of each game.
At the end of the evening if there is a tie on points then a second doubles is played using those who did not play in the first doubles and the winner of this set decides the result of the match.
In the last two or three years we have had just four teams playing and in the second week the first week winners played each other for the splendid trophy and the losers also played a match, but this year with six teams we had three winning and three losing teams to play on the second night.
It was decided that each winning should play the other two and the losers would do the same but time and table space would not allow two full matches in one evening so we played half matches. All the No.1 players played each other and the No 2s the other No. 2s and so on. In each match two doubles were played so everyone got two singles and two doubles in the evening.
On the first night Team 1 – Nigel Foreshew, Mark Farr, James Palmer and Elliott Volpe played Team 2 – Harry Jutle, Ted Andrew, Nathan Roberts and Gillian Davies and won by 68 points to 61. In the second match Team 5 – Steve Brown, Trevor Davies, John Bacon and Margaret Shock beat team 3 – Ady Marshall, Roger Allsebrook, Jonathan Bacon and Charlie Shave by 84 to 70 and in the third match Team 4 – Brian Kitchener, Richard Owens, Chris Bacon and Dave Gwilt beat team 6 – Bob Marshall, Bryan Farr, Roy Davies and Matthew Jones by 83 to 71.
The handicappers realised that some of the very young players had not been given enough points so some adjustments were made for the second night and better games resulted.
Another complication occurred because three players who had played the first evening could not be there the second week but three replacements of similar standards were found and again everyone turned up in good time.
Attached to this report are all the result cards showing that the final team order was in fact :-
Team 4 in a good first place with 105 points, team 5 in second place with 97 and team 1 on 90 points. They were followed by very close results in the losers matches with Team 3 on 97, Team 6 on 96 and Team 2 on 92
The event is gathering more competitors and it makes a very pleasant finish to the table tennis season. The format is always open to different ideas, but Nimmie Hodges, whose idea it has always been, likes to give players of all standards a chance to play against each other. With the age range this year from 13 to 75 and with players from the top of division one to novices from coaching it has certainly been achieved.
Thank you to everyone who participated and helped with setting up and putting away all the things. See you all next year.