Last night we played Old Town Hoods in our 3rd match of the season. Once again we were impressed with the friendliness of the teams in the league (or at least in division 3!) and we had a thoroughly enjoyable and sociable evening, made even better than usual because we won!! The final score was 5 sets to 4 in our favour but the match was in the balance until the end. We won the first 2 sets, OTH won the next 2, we won the 5th and 6th sets, and then they won the next 2 again – 4 sets all. Along the way I lost narrowly to OTH’s Derek 10-12 in the 5th game but our Derek just managed to beat him 11-9 in their 5th game.  As a result it all came down to the last set with Derek playing OTH’s plucky Cynthia in which Derek prevailed giving us the overall victory. In fact Derek was our star again playing at No. 1 and winning all 3 of his sets with me and Miezek winning one each. Naturally I like to think it was my solitary victory that made the difference but I am sure Mieszek and Derek would differ! On a personal note, the main lesson I have taken from this match is much the same as the first match I played in 3 weeks ago – patience and go for consistency first. In addition, get more of the b****y serves back.

If there were points for the quality of support at matches I’m sure we would be leading the division by now. Once again we had a good turn out made up on this occasion by two of our partners and Derek’s God children – two delightful young girls who were absolutely amazed at how the old guy hurled himself round the place and actually looked as if he knew what he was doing some of the time. They were impressed and thoroughly enjoyed the event. After the match we returned to Miesek’s and Julie’s for a lentil soup supper, fresh home made rolls and suitable celebratory libations – a great way to finish the day.

Table Tennis Things I know…. is an interesting post by Greg Letts on the excellent tabletennis.about.com web site. Greg feels he would be a very much better player today if a number of now seemingly obvious things had dawned on him earlier in his career. Most of us in the POPPs team are returning to table tennis after longish breaks, in my case over 30 years, and are keen to make up for lost time. Some of Gregg’s tips are especially relevant for us, but not all. His advice to ’start young’ is not too useful, to us at least!! The rest of his 10 tips however are worth serious consideration. In particular I found his observations on the importance of serving and returning serves very useful and reinforces my one observations and experience so far. Rather than complain about the low cunning of some opponents’ serves  learn to give as good as you get! Look for opportunities to play better players is another tip but of course that is exactly why we have joined the league – not with any expectation we will have immediate success, or very much at all to begin with, but because it is a sure fire way of playing against better players and improving.

The section on planning your training may be a little more controversial as he makes it clear that, in his opinion, it is not worth spending much time practicing strokes you are not going to use in a match. But surely you don’t play those strokes in matches because they are poor or you lack confidence in them and not practising them just means, obviously, they will not improve and you will never be able to play anything but your preferred game, win or lose. However, on thinking about this a little more I think it depends on what it is you want to achieve and why you are playing in the first place. There is no doubt that even our fairly restricted repertoire of strokes could be much improved and a great deal of progress can still be made just developing what we already have. As Gregg says, “you have more potential than you think” and I’m sure this is true of all of us. It just depends how far you want to develop that potential. Personally I want to get as good as I can get within the constraints of my time, other commitments and boredom threshold if I play too much. I’m aiming for about twice a week on average. I would prefer an all round game where I can vary the style of play, tactics and shots, if possible but this will depend on good coaching, another of Greg’s tips. We are very fortunate we have this already thanks to Alan.

It seems the results that come through each week to our secretary are not complete and do not refer only to that week.  There should be 5 results in Division 3 per week but not all of these come through immediately.  I will update these results posts retrospectively so that all the same week’s results are together in the same post. Full results for week 2 can be viewed on the Results page (item in the sidebar menu Pages section). The results for Division 3 in week 2 commencing Monday 13th October are as follows:

• Northowram (J Wasilewski 3, B Gee 1, R Gee 2)  6  v  Old Town Hounds (P Ward 2, S Allen 0, D Williamson 1)  3
• HxTTC Lions (B Speak 2, H Kendall 0, J Tallis 1)  3  v  HxTTC Tradesmen 2 (Matthew Knapton 1, R Holmes 2, Mark Knapton 3)  6
• HxTTC Rams 2 (S Northey 3, D Stott 2, J Broadbent 3)  8  v  HxTTC Popp (R Thomas 0, J Taylor 1, P McMullen 0)  1
• HxTTC Evergreens (D Lewis 3, M Curry 3, M Higgins 3)  9  v  Sowerby 3 (A Whiteley 0, P Parry 0, J Korner 0)  0

Missing: Old Town Robins v ARK

The POPPs team played its second match on Tuesday, an away meeting with Rams 2 at the Halifax Table Tennis Centre. This time the other 3 players in our squad of 6 took the stage – John, Peter and Robin – so this was their debut. The result was the same as last week with the home team, Rams, winning 8 – 1. In most other respects the match was similar to the last one – all the POPPs players played well at times, in fact as well and sometimes even better than I have seen them play before, and gave their opponents some good games. The main difference seems to be one of consistency and being a little more patient. John won our only set 3 – 0 and went on to run Rams’ number 1 close going into the 5th game before losing 2 – 3. At the moment it is difficult to judge just how well we are doing but my feeling is that there are a quite a few positives we can take from both our opening matches, the fact that despite our inexperience of match play we are all playing well and getting close to winning in a fair number of the games. Our players are definitely rising to the occasion and a relatively small amount of improvement, particularly in consistency, could make a big difference.  One way of getting an idea of how things are going is to see how our opponents did last year in the league and in the individual positions overall. The Rams 1 team was not registered to play in our division last season but 2 of their players – Don and Joe playing at 2 and 3 – did and finished in the individual table at 16th and 22nd.   Even at this early stage I would predict we will win more games in the second half of the season than the first.  I may be persuaded to take a small bet on this! Next week we have a bye so there will be no match report.

• HxTTC A.R.K (K Broadbent 3, A Feetham 2, R Oldroyd 3)  8   v  HxTTC Popp (D Greenwood 1, M Konrad 0, T Wassall 0)  1
• Sowerby 3 (A Whiteley 3, T Kershaw 3, P Parry 3)  9  v  Old Town Hoods (P Dean 0, D Coneron 0, J Sweeney 0)  0
• Old Town Hounds (D Williamson 3, R Tipton 2, P Ward 3)  8  v  Old Town Robins (F Rothwell 0, P Dean 0, D Coneron 1)  1
• Northowram  (B Gee 2, J Wasilewski 0, R Gee 0)  2   v  HxTTC Evergreens (M Curry 3, D Lewis 2, M Higgins 2)  7

The business plan for the next 3 years has just been published for comment. Essentially the plan is to try and secure sufficient funding for the centre to continue. You can view it by clicking on this link – HxTTC Business Plan. Comments, ideas and observations will be very welcome. You can either add your comments here or email our Chairman Paul Stansfield at stanform@blueyonder.co.uk.

The first match is over and we acquitted ourselves pretty well. Our opponents were HxTTC A.R.K. The team was called Senior Citizens last year, finishing 3rd in the division, but renamed this year after their names – Alan, Roy and Keith. We couldn’t have asked for a more friendly bunch to play our first ever match against. We had a great time thanks to our opponents and also because of the enthusiastic support of Julia, Gayle and Peter. Julia went as far as to say she found it quite exciting and we all looked the part. I decided not to pursue this last comment, just in case. We lost the match 8 – 1 with Derek emerging as our star player. He won a very close match against Alan, their no. 2,  taking the 5th game 11 – 8. One other match went to 5 games, me against Alan also, but I lost the 5th game 8 -11. Two other sets went to 4 games. I think this was more than a creditable performance for the first competitive match by an inexperience team. Our opponents were somewhat older than us (73 years old each!) but have been playing competitive table tennis for quite a long time and had some very wise and experienced heads on their shoulders. I found this extremely encouraging and I would like to feel that our team (we’re all 62) will be playing just as well as A, R and K and with the same enjoyment in 11 years’ time!

My feeling is that our biggest disadvantage was lack of consistency (exactly what coach Alan predicted) and lapses of concentration in part due to tiredness (at least in my case). What is very encouraging is that, given our lack of experience and the relatively short time most have us have been playing again, there is a lot of improvement still to come, perhaps more so than for some the opponents we will be playing through the season. And we shouldn’t overlook the quality of our opposition tonight or how daunting our task was. Not only did they finish 3rd last year, in the individual table their no.1 player Keith finished 3rd winning 81% of his games, Alan finished 10th with 71% wins and Roy 14th with 63%. This is out of 37 players in the division. We all had some very good games, win or lose. I think this bodes very well for the future. We will get better and not all our opposition will be this tough. Frankly, before we played I thought any result better than 0 – 9 would be an achievement. I think Derek showed what it is we need to do in matches which is to be more patient than perhaps we normally are, and play percentage shots rather than, in my case certainly, going for the winners too often. We need to stay in the rallies and be slightly more discriminating in going for the (often rather hopeful) winners. There were times when all of us played as well as I have seen. If only we could play like that all the time! I also need to be more observant. It wasn’t until after the match was over that Julia mentioned that one of their players was left handed. I hadn’t noticed!

So, well done team – and on to round 2 next week when John, Peter and Robin will be joining the fray. I won’t pretend I wasn’t nervous and it was a bit stressful – mainly because we are playing as a team. But we are doing this to enjoy it and, hopefully, improve our game and we will surely succeed in both of these. We’ll be happy to take the wins if and when they come along of course!

Last night the POPPs team, joined by a sprinkling of partners, enjoyed a pre-season social at the Lord Nelson at Luddenden after which we repaired to the home of our Secretary, Mieszek, for a homemade barszcz and bread supper. The barszcz , a Polish beetroot soup, was absolutely delicious. The get together was primarily social but needless to say a lot of the conversation was on table tennis and tactics. One suggestions was that we all play in drag to distract the opposition team but John, an old Halifax TT League hand, told us that this had already been tried and the individual concerned was banned. Who’d have thought. In Halifax of all places!

We now have a team selection strategy. There are six registered players and the idea is that we all get an even share of the matches, as far as is practicable. This means we should get about 10 matches each over the season, or every other match week. This may mean that we do not pick the strongest team each week but this is not what the exercise is about for us. In any case, it wouldn’t be clear what the strongest team would be as, with one exception, John, we are all of a similar standard and any one of us is capable of beating most of the others on a good day with a following wind.

The first match is next Monday 6th October at the Halifax Table Tennis Centre against HxTTC A.R.K. It is their home night so we are hoping to get some ideas on how to host a match, how to umpire, how to work the electronic scoring system and generally what is involved. Our first two matches are away so hopefully we will be ready to run the show by the time our first home match comes round. Full reports will be available however embarrassing! There may be triumphs, there will be tears, there will be humiliations no doubt. For those of us that still need it the experience  will be character building.

If I can persuade Julie to part with her barszcz recipe I will pass it on. If you can’t wait, although it won’t be as good, here is Delia Smith’s Polish Beetroot Soup recipe.

We have now received the fixture list for the coming season. Our first match is next Monday, 6th October, at the Halifax table Tennis Centre. Personally I feel quite nervous about this and I may not even be playing! Working out the complete fixture details was quite complicated involving looking at 3 different pages to find out for each week who we are playing, if it is a home or an away match, and if away, where and what evening. I think we have got it right. The full fixture list can be viewed by clicking on POPPs Table Tennis Fixtures in the right-hand menu Pages section.