After the first three weeks of the season the Southend & District Table Tennis League Premier Division is starting to take shape.
A familiar look at the top as two of the favourites in Rawreth A and Thorpe Bay A have started with three wins each, with Rawreth currently sneaking into a 1 point lead. Joining these two on 3 wins are Rawreth\u2019s club mates Rawreth B who have recorded good wins against Hadleigh Forum, Rayleigh Mill and Thorpe Bay B.
There have also been strong starts from Irons and Brand Identity and I\u2019ll wager Irons will be in the title race right up to the end this year with their new signing Lian Squirrell to play alongside Reece Seddon and the long standing Irons of Bowles, Monk, Brown and McCloud.
At the bottom of the table it looks like it might be a long season for Hockley B and Invicta with just the 1 point to show from their first three games but it is early days and I feel there will be lots of unexpected points won and lost in what will be the tightest title race for years.
Some of the stand out performances in the first three weeks have probably been, Martin Archie\u2019s three wins against Irons A, Duncan Taylor\u2019s hattrick against a very strong Thorpe Bay A side, a welcome return to action for Essex player Matt Spero for his new side Thorpe Bay B and the first game of the season for the league\u2019s top player and current Mens\u2019 Singles champion Mitchell Jones. Jones comfortably won his three games against the league leaders and Stanford\u2019s fortunes this year will very much depend on how many times they are able to field their strongest side.
So we\u2019ve seen some great table tennis in the first three weeks and we wish good luck to all teams for the rest of the season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Division 2 the big winners of the week were Hockley C who thumped Runnymede 9-0 and moved themselves into second place in the division. Runnymede were without their big hitters Tony Millward and Dmitry Kisil and the Hockley boys, Paul Strutt, Brian Bissenden and Paul Ogden, took full advantage conceding just two sets all night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It’s Matchpoint B who sit at the top of the table however, they chalked up their third win of the season beating Rawreth Megazone D 7-2. This side must be one of the pre-season favourites to get promotion with two promising youngsters Max Mayo and Alex Bowden in their side plus two seasoned veterans in Dennis Squirrell and John Lott. Lott, Mayo and Squirrell turned out against Rawreth who fielded their own seasoned veteran in Gus Heath. It was Heath who brought home their two points beating Mayo and Squirrell but Lott defeated him in three close sets 12\/10 13\/11 12\/10 to record his first ever win against him. Amar Al-Soufi took a set off Mayo and Squirrell but otherwise it was plain sailing for Matchpoint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the other end of the table Stanford C fell to their third defeat losing 6-3 to Invicta B. David Barnes, Sarah Ball and Steve Lennox all recorded two wins for Invicta whilst Vaughan Chambers denied Ball and Barnes their hat tricks and Peter Moxham got the better of Lennox. Invicta now sit fifth in the table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Canvey B got the better of Hockley D running out 6-3 winners. Kevin Walsingham was Canvey\u2019s POTM winning all his games for the loss of just one set. Trevor Hayes won two and Ray Baker added the sixth point. For Hockley John George picked up a single win beating Baker but there were two wins for teenager William Evesham who beat Baker and then took the important scalp of Trevor Hayes coming back from 2-1 down and winning the decider 11\/8. Earlier Hayes had got the better of another youngster, Elliot Brackenbury, this time winning 11\/8 in the fifth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Team of the Week \u2013 Hockley C<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Player of the Week \u2013 John Lott<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After two rounds of matches in Division 3, three of the teams that have played twice remain unbeaten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Leading the way are Basildon \u2018B\u2019 <\/strong>who have only surrendered one point in their two victories. Skipper Andy Roff has led from the front with back-to-back maximums, and it was good to see newcomer Michael Elemide get off the mark with a double in his first match.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The junior Evolve TTA <\/strong>side found the going tough at times last season and managed only 5 wins. A different story so far this season, with two wins already, 14 points, and all 6 of the players used having made good contributions. Ben Berwick, Thomas Chan and Nova Sriman Narayanan have recorded maximums and their teammates Oliver Willson, Teddy Kent and Reuben Stracey have added valuable extra points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another largely junior team, Matchpoint \u2018D\u2019, <\/strong>have also won both their matches and occupy 3rd<\/sup> place in the table with 12 points, courtesy of 7\/2 and 5\/4 wins over Canvey \u2018C\u2019 and Hadleigh Forum \u2018D\u2019 respectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Invicta \u2018C\u2019 <\/strong>started the season well with a 7\/2 win over Rawreth Meggazone \u2018E\u2019 with Brendan Raja turning in an unbeaten performance. Their next outing was a home match against Hockley \u2018E\u2019 and, although all their players got on the scoreboard, they slipped to a 6\/3 defeat. Thus 10 points to date and 4th<\/sup> place in the fledgling league table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hockley \u2018E\u2019 <\/strong>have had just the one visit to the table so far, the 6\/3 win over Invicta \u2018C\u2019 described above, with Gary Beck and Ron Rogerson unbeaten on the night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Both Hadleigh Forum \u2018D\u2019 <\/strong>and Rawreth Meggazone \u2018E\u2019 <\/strong>have played twice but are yet to record a win. Forum started their season in the worst possible way, suffering a thumping 9\/0 defeat at the hands of Basildon \u2018B\u2019. Their fortunes were much improved the following week when a Douglas Brown hat-trick and a point from Sineh Ball saw them pick up their first points of the season. Meggazone are also winless, the 3 points they have accrued so far coming from Mike Webb (2) and Ro Brett (1).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stanford \u2018D\u2019, Canvey \u2018C\u2019 <\/strong>and Hockley \u2018F\u2019 <\/strong>have only played one match each but all have picked up at least 1 point. Andrew Jessop (2) and James Parker (1) were the Stanford point winners. Ray Baker was responsible for both of Canvey\u2019s points and Kris Chankov secured Hockley\u2019s solitary point in the clash of the juniors match against Evolve TTA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the first three weeks of the season the Southend & District Table Tennis League Premier Division is starting to take shape. A familiar look at the top as two of the favourites in Rawreth A and Thorpe Bay A have started with three wins each, with Rawreth currently sneaking into a 1 point lead. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[10],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3128"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3128"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3131,"href":"http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3128\/revisions\/3131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/ul><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"