Rayne A completed the double in the Braintree Table Tennis League when they won the team knockout cup at the cup finals evening to add to their league title.
The Netts club added a third piece of silverware – the C team winning the handicap cup after the B and D teams won divisions two and three – and Sudbury Wanderers, in only their second league season, took home the restricted cup.
Rayne A made short work of polishing off Sudbury Nomads in the team final.
Adam Buxton, Paul Lucas and Lee McHugh all won their first singles, Buxton and McHugh in four games and Lucas in three.
Lucas and Buxton had beaten Karl Baldwin and Ken Lewis in the opening doubles and Lucas and McHugh secured the trophy with a second doubles win, this time over Lewis and Aron Jordan.
Wanderers had to work a bit harder to overcome Rayne E. They won 5-2 but it was a bit closer than the scoreline suggests.
The opening doubles went to Rayne, and after Ian Shrubsole equalised with a win over Scott Whiteside, Alex Morgan put Rayne 2-1 up with a win over Peter Abbott.
Barry Mann then put Wanderers back on track with a win over Adam Pitt, a set that could on paper have gone either way, before Abbott and Shrubsole scored an important win in the doubles over Morgan and Whiteside despite losing the first game 11-1 and then being stretched to five ends.
Shrubsole beat Morgan before Mann clinched the trophy with the closest set of the evening, a win over Whiteside 11-5, 12-10, 6-11, 13-15, 14-12.
Netts C made it three wins in a row for Netts teams in the handicap cup, following the success of the E team last year – to which this season’s C team partly contributed – and the C team, with a different set of players, the previous year.
Their opponents, Black Notley G, started well enough, Graham Chinnery overcoming a 14-point handicap to beat Keith Rolfe, but it was all downhill from there.
Rolfe won his second set but it was Jack Dearsley and James Rissen who took the plaudits with two comfortable wins each to give them a 5-1 win.
- Covering the individuals and the final matches at the top of each of the three divisions over the past four weeks has meant that I haven’t had space to mention some other noteworthy performances.
There was a first treble of the season for Peter Rickwood in Rayne E’s win over Notley C, including a victory over Rev Matthews, soon to be crowned division two singles champion
Another of his victims in that match, Dave Parker, came up with a rare treble of his own in Notley C’s 8-2 win over Netts C, outscoring both his teammates for the first time this season.
Rayne E’s Matthew Brown produced a late season flurry. He did not play until mid January and then racked up 15 wins out of 15.
The venerable Peter Pond scored an excellent three wins for Notley E against champions Netts B.
And nine wins out of 12 – losing out only to the champions – gave Notley F’s Jamie Brooks, 59 years Pond’s junior, a 66.7 per cent average in his first season in division two.
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