Roger and Chris from WWCC 'A' first again at the Jet's home venue circa 7pm... hall in darkness but a large elf by the name of Stuart we suspect had already set up the four table tennis courts for tonights matches...
A couple of other players soon arrived along with Geof Bax... who complained we were on his table, our venue at the Grammar School was a skating rink (according to other players) and ... well there must have been something else...
Roger and I like to get to the matches early, so we can have a knock and kick of the games on time, in fact I have noticed Abbots always have two players there at 7:20pm.. and in truth we could have started our match at 7:30pm... it wasn't to be though we finally got proceedings going about 7:50pm after repeated attempts to fire up Howards backhand failed miserably... (yes our captain - no.1 reserve was being given an opportunity to shine once again this evening)
Howard started by announcing he wanted to get away early as he plays snooker on Thursdays and was expected at the club later on, so we agreed to play the doubles out of order, the game before last as a gesture of good will for the jovial welsh laddie! Where is his commitment the WWCC 'A' team mates contemplated....
Oh Yes Ken and Mick thought the piece about 'funny bats' in the blog this week was a pre-match dig at Ken's funny bat... but we re-assured Ken he actually knows what is going on and does think about his game, a far cry from others who wave their arms about stabbing at the ball madly and really have little control over their game at all !
On with the game then... Roger played Phil Evans first on... I don't know whether you know this, but Phil is now running the Barnet Junior Jam training sessions at the Barnet centre on Mondays and Fridays... good for him... he's a good guy and will at 6 feet something.. proabably 4 inches command the respect from the kids...
Roger came through the first game... just in the 5th set, Phil playing very well indeed and Roger struggling a little, well done Phil a good performance indeed... next up Howard went down fairly easily to Ken in straight sets to level the match score at 1-1.
Chris then and Mick which was a very quick game, Mick is not match fit at all after a muscle / ligament strain pre-Christmas which has seen him play only 3 matches all season in Watford...
Roger now against Ken... this is normally either a 4 or 5 setter.. but tonight Roger playing like a demon was too fast and too strong for Ken... power forehands left Ken picking up the ball from successful winners rather than misses from previous encounters between these two. Roger came through convincingly 3-0.
Chris now against Phil... this was an open and good competitive attacking match that Chris won 3-0 taking the match score to 1-4 in favour of WWCC. Next... Howard against Mick Lowens... a good open game... Howard came through 3-0 after an interesting first leg which went to 14-12 to Howard... could've been very different had Mick taken the open rubber...
Doubles now to let Howard get away... he is such a sporting athelete... WWCC 'A' pairing of Roger and Howard never looking threatened by Phil and Mick... 3-0 to the WWCC 'A' boys again...
Final set the big one Ken vs Chris... The first game was closer than it might have been but luck was on Ken's side a couple of edges made the game close at 11-9 to Chris... the next two legs were not so close but nevertheless a very enjoyable game indeed.
Match result 1-7 to WWCC 'A' and they take away all the 4 points from this fixture and leave Abbots wondering what they can salvage from the remaining league fixtures and their position at the bottom of the Premier table.
Always good fun playing Abbots... a nice evening and nice people... hopefully they think the same about us !! Match started at 7:50 and finished at 9:40pm... Interesting discussion afterwards about possible changes to the format next year... at least we are all talking more openely about this stuff now... the blog appears to be performing it's role... which is to ensure that the league delivers to the members what they want !!
Report posted by : Chris Ogle
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