The new season in the Halifax Table Tennis League started this week with a new look setup for the POPPs table tennis teams. Yes, teams, in the plural. We now have two teams which we have imaginatively named POPPS A and POPPS B. This reflects a welcome growth in the number of members who want to play league table tennis so we have two squads of 4 now rather than one squad of 6. This means that each each player will play 3 weeks out of 4 rather than every other week as last season. Overall we did pretty well last season and finished 8th out of 11 teams in division 3. This year we hope our A team, made up of our strongest and now battle-seasoned players will finish in the top half of the division and the ‘Academy’ team of youngsters (average about 60) will try to do as well as we did last year. The build up for 2012 is now well under way!

The following match reports have been provided by two of our more articulate team members (they bend in the middle better than some of the other players), Robin and Peter.

POPP A versus Old Town Robins 9 – 0 (Robin)

The first game of the Winter League season was between our A team (Peter, Terry A & John T) against Old Town Robins. We are glad to report a comprehensive victory, 9-0, with our opponents only winning one game. One of their team found John’s wily serves hard to cope with and slightly lost the will to live. New boy, Terry   had a comfortable wins, which is a good way of welcoming him to this league and indeed, both Peter and John won by good margins. Let’s hope their confidence will have received a boost, but there will be tougher opposition as the season unfolds.

Peter added a short report, spilling the beans on the activities of team Lothario, John. We assume Doris doesn’t read this.

Thanks to a polished performance on his debut from Million Pound Transferee Terry A. and good supporting roles from John T and Peter Mc, Popps A achieved a  sound 9-0 win in our first match of the winter session.  John even found time to give our opponents some free coaching (to the 2 attractive lady visitors of course ! ).  He also did some canvassing to get them to come down to Club Lane for regular sessions — an idea we should all follow up on to get our numbers up and enable our club to keep going. (whether or not they are attractive young ladies of course).

POPPS B versus RAMS 2- 7 (Robin).

The B Team, (Alan, Robin and Derek, substituting for John M & Terry W), met some of tougher opposition in the shape of Rams on Tuesday 22 September. Derek had 2 good wins, but struggled in match 3 as his arthritis kicked in. Alan and Robin struggled and lost their matches; the former showing patience but the inability to put away winners whilst the latter, despite winning some good points, played in a generally reckless manner and squandered many points. However, the game was played with good humour and sportsmanship.