POPPS versus RAMS 2 Tuesday October 14th
Written by Terry on October 15th, 2008The 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.
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An excellent report Terry, as was the previous.
I agree entirely with your remarks and I am sure our results will soon start to reflect improvements.
Keep up the good work.
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Thanks for your comment Peter. After 2 months and 14 posts you are the first to comment on the POPPs team web site! There ought to be some sort of prize for this. I’ll think of something! Incidently, I am hoping that a team member will be willing to write a short report for the matches when I can’t make it.
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I’d like to thank Terry for the sterling work he’s done on putting together this website and (a more difficult task in the long-term) keeping it so up to date: Not a simple matter on top of his full-time job. The more input each of us can make to our website, the easier his task will no doubt be.
Those of us not as yet using the Yahoo “list” that Terry has also set up, might like to consider using it. Although registering with this list takes a (very small) bit of time & hassle, the modest amount of effort pays dividends. There’s a heap of useful information on the “list” (e.g. everyone’s contact details, e.g who is available for which matches) and, once you’re registered, it’s an absolute breeze to use.
My own added incentive for registering with Yahoo (a necessary precursor to joining the list) is that it’s the cheapest (zero cost), quickest & simplest way I know of backing-up critical emails that I don’t want to lose in case my computer crashes. I blind-copy such emails to my Yahoo address.
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Thanks for the plug for the halifaxtabletennis Yahoo group Mieszek. I will in due course make another attempt to ’sell’ the idea to team members. Its main use intitally was just as a convenient email distribution facility – messages and replies to halifaxtabletennis@yahoogroups.com go to all members of the group. Since then it has become useful, as you say, to keep centrally and private to us our contact details, availability and teams selected for each match. Unlike this web site, our yahoo group is entirely private to us. If anyone would like more information about our yahoo group and/or help joining please email me. I would be happy to show it to you and we can always chat about it over a pint!
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I’m wondering if there is a prize for someone miles and miles and miles away showing interest in Division Three table tennis reports written by the multi-talented Terry Wassall?
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Hi Susan. You are undoubtedly our furthest flung fan so far – in fact our only fan so far other than our partners and sponsor. Helen, who is our team sponsor, has promised to bring some groupies along to a match soon, which no doubt will raise our spirits. I’ll think of a suitable prize for when I see you next year.