Last year’s Division 1 champions Lentern put out their big guns, Kevin Read, Django Fung and Gurgit Bhambra in the opening fixture of this year’s Southend and District Summer Table Tennis league but found that Rawreth A were more than a match for them and they only got 2 points, with a 5 set victory for Django over the fast improving Reece Seddon and a victory for Django and Gurgit over Reece and Mindaugas Sinkus. Ben Warner was unbeaten for Rawreth in their 7-2 victory. At the moment Hullbridge B lead the Division after their emphatic 9-0 victory over Hadleigh Forum. One very interesting note here is that their captain Bill Smith won all 4 of his games, which is only 2 less than he won in the whole of the previous Winter league. He must prefer playing in the Summer rather than the cold Winter evenings. In the game between Kingswood and Castle Point A no player was unbeaten although Gus Heath would be pleased with his 2 singles victories that led his team to a 5-4 win.
Colin Clements had an unbeaten performance in leading his Kingswood B team to a close 5-4 victory over Castle Point B in Division 2 in a game where Keith Neville had a good victory over Steve Appleby. A weakened Canvey A put up a good fight against Runnymede despite two players playing up. But an unbeaten performance from Tony Millward made the difference between the two teams. Gavin Warner had a good win over Phil Digby.
In the game between the youngsters of Hullbridge C against the experienced Canvey B in Division 3, the highlight was a win for Adam Jackman against Geoff Banthorpe which saw some outstanding rallies with Adam's hard smashing against Geoff's accurate spinny lobs proving decisive in his team’s victories. Although I am sure that he gets plenty of practice against his Dad in this sort of play. Basildon Hospital had an 8-1 victory over Castle Point C with Errol Anderson and Sid Hills unbeaten. Tony Ayliffe picked up the consolation win for the Council with victory over Clive Beauchamp. Warehouse B beat Rawreth B with an unbeaten performance on the night from Jonathan Allen. Another unbeaten performance came from Denis Squirrell who led Hockley B to victory over RESC.
Rawreth Juniors A had an entertaining fixture with Hockley C in Division 4 with the final doubles deciding the overall match in favour of Hockley. Botond Mezo led the way for Rawreth with two singles victories but it was Jason Stringer who was unbeaten in all of his games that led to the Hockley victory. In the game between Hullbridge D and Warehouse C 4 of the 6 players were making their league debuts, with the game being decided in the final doubles which was won by the 2 experienced league players Jo Hills and Dave Booroff of Hullbridge over Jonathan Bennett and Conrad Gomes of Warehouse. There was a close game between the two teams that finish 3rd and 4th in the Winter League Canvey C and Invicta B with Ross Warner of Canvey being the star player winning all of his games. John Golding won his usual two singles but had a shock when he played Terry Castile who took John to 5 sets, a good performance from Terry who was playing in his first ever League match.
On the result card there is a place for any comments and I would appreciate any comments that you would like to make about the matches
B. Delf, C, Jacob
