Southend League
Division 3 – Final Report
This was a season dominated by Basildon B who led the pack from week 1 and ended up as worthy champions with 123 points, suffering only one defeat along the way. Two of their players finished with winning averages over 90%, skipper Andy Roff and, leading the way, Dave Walton (92.59%).
Invicta C kept up a dogged pursuit of the leaders all season without ever managing to catch them and eventually had to settle for the runners-up place, 16 points adrift. There were consistent performances across their squad, with Trish Winter (85.19%) and Brendan Raja (86.67%) leading the way.
A strong finish to the season, with 5 wins from their last 7 matches, saw Hockley E rise from 5th in the table at the turn of the year to an eventual 3rd place finish, ending up with 95 points. Captain Gary Beck (72.73%) and Ron Rogerson (77.78%) were their leading lights.
Only 6 points separated the next 3 teams. Despite losing more games than they won, Stanford D finished 4th with 91 points. This was in no small part down to the efforts of Randy Santiago who finished the season with an impressive average of 92.31%.
Hadleigh Forum D had a rather up and down season. Bottom of the pile after week 1, they climbed to 3rd before 2 defeats in the last 3 matches saw them drop to an eventual 5th place and 89 points by the close of play. Two players at the opposite ends of their table tennis careers led the way for Forum, the ever improving Todd Barker (79.17%) and the evergreen Douglas Brown (79.49%).
With a blend of youth and experience in their squad, Matchpoint D ended the season in 6th place with 85 points. Half of their squad came from the Junior ranks and, of these, mention should be made of Samuel Morgan who finished with an impressive 61.11% winning average. Their leading player though, holding everything together, was Richard Sloman who topped the averages in this Division with 93.94%.
A slow start saw Canvey C languishing in 9th place for the first half of the season and it was not until the end of the year that they began to improve before achieving a 7th place finish with 68 points. Steve Kemp (76.19%) and Che Martin (75.67%) led the way for the Islanders.
Rawreth Megazone F occupied 8th position with 60 points. Their cause was not helped by having to concede 12 points during the season, but consistent performances from Ro Brett, Graham Back and Mike Webb, all of whom averaged over 40%,kept the team out of the bottom two.
The final two places in this division were occupied by the wholly Junior teams of Evolve and Hockley F. Given the ages of the players across both teams and their lack of experience in League competition, this was no surprise Along with the Matchpoint Junior players, all of these youngsters deserve great credit for their enthusiasm and sporting behaviour throughout the season, and they will surely have improved a great deal from their experience, so there is plenty to build on for next season As for individual performances, for Evolve, both Teddy Kent and Miles Bygrave finished with a winning average of over 50%. For Hockley F, both George Higgins and James Evesham achieved a 38.89% win rate.
Report by Dave Woolmer