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!