Bolton News 1 November

Last week the Bolton Table Tennis League took a break from league matches for the first round of the Warburton Cup. This is divided into an upper and lower section to avoid large handicaps in the early rounds. Also, due to team entry numbers and to get the two halves to sixteen teams each, there were a lot of byes in this first round leaving only a few matches to be played.

There was only one match to be played in the top half of the draw. Having had their star player John Hutchison missing for the first four weeks of matches, it could be argued that Farnworth SC A had got themselves into an artificially low position in the table and therefore had a too large a handicap of 79.5 when meeting Coburg higher in the table. In the end, it went in Farnworth’s favour 403.5-311. Reassuringly, had the teams been on scratch, they would still have won by twelve points.

In the bottom half of the draw, there were only five matches listed to play. With one result to come and another being played alongside their league match next week left three to report on. Irlam Steel could not raise a team and gave a walkover to Brass Zone into the next round.
St. Paul’s Peel had a 30.5 start but apparently didn’t need it beating Ladybridge B 385.5-313.
They don’t come any closer than the match that Meadow Ben C had against Polonia Club B who had a 100.5 start. After the first five sets, Polonia were in a comfortable lead 235.5-207. Then in the sixth set, Ian Wheeldon narrowed the gap against Nicolai Jitek winning 45-37 and the score now stood at 272.5-252 to Polonia. Then Jack Berry narrowed the gap against Bartomiej Pietak further winning 44-25. The score now stood at 297.5-296 to Polonia. In the penultimate match, Ian Wheeldon took on Karolina Mucha winning 45-35. This put Meadow Ben in front 341-332.5. All now rested on the final set. Meadow Ben’s Alan Hibbert took on Polonia’s Necolai Jitek and lost 32-40. So Necolai could just not quite swing it leaving the final score at 373-372.5 to Meadow Ben. What a match.

This week we are back to two more weeks of league matches before the Divisional cups take place.

Author: via Bolton Table Tennis League
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