POPPs was well and truly beaten by Lions last night losing 8 – 1. The combined age and experience or our team (Derek, Terry and Peter), about 186 years between us, was not enough to overcome the youthful exuberance, speed and rather disconcerting flexibility of the Lions – Chie, Ben and Hannah – all who appear to be in their teens. It would have helped if our combined experience had included a bit more table tennis of course and if the youngsters had shown a bit more respect for their elders! It started well with Derek beating Chie, playing at number one, 3 games to 2. However, that turned out to be the only set we won. We could have taken a couple of more sets possibly, with Terry losing in 5 games to Ben and Derek losing in 5 games to Hannah. But we didn’t. We were all very pleased for Hannah who was delighted after winning her first set against Peter as this was the first she had won this year, possibly ever. She continued to fill her boots by beating the rest of the POPPs team too! I only hope in the years to come when she looks back on a glittering table tennis career she’ll think fondly of the kindly old gents that gave her her first big break and confidence boost. One of the most interesting aspects of the match was playing against Chie who uses the pen holder grip favoured by many Chinese players and demonstrated to great effect in the Bejing Olympics last September. Chie’s game was based mainly on blocking against top spin, taking the ball just after the bounce and directing it back accurately to all parts of the table, and sharp pushes against back spin. These were essentially back hand shots and reminded me very much of our Mieszek’s style of play. It would have been fascinating to see them play one another. Once again it was evident that our opponents had better defensive games than us and played more consistently. All three of us had our moments with a sprinkling of good attacking winners but not enough to counteract the unforced errors, unreturned services, serves of the end of the table and so on.