News & Views from the Colchester Table Tennis League
with Press Officer Martyn Green

28th November-2007
PEGASUS ON COURSE FOR DIVISION THREE TITLE

With two more wins Pegasus A made it nine out of nine to head Division Three at the halfway stage of the Colchester & District Table Tennis League season. It’s a real team effort from the Marks Tey side and once again they shared the responsibilities as they recorded back-to-back 8-2 victories over third placed Pegasus B and fourth placed Clairmont. Steve Noble was the only maximum man when the two Pegasus teams met whilst it was Pete Mills turn to win all three against Clairmont. Second placed St Mary’s D also had a brace of wins against Pegasus D and H20 Rowhedge F but surprisingly slipped up against lowly Tollesbury B going down 7-3. With their two unbeaten players John Sorrell and Mick Bowles absent, Rob King and Martyn Lewis made hay while the sun shone both completing maximums. Sorrell and Bowles led the way against Pegasus’s C team with Marlene Smith joining them in a 10-0 win and Sorrell and Smith repeated the feat in an 8-2 win at Rowhedge without Bowles. Pegasus A are twelve points clear of St Mary’s with their B team some thirty points back. Promotion therefore for the top two teams looks a forgone conclusion with relegation a much closer issue. H20 Rowhedge F look doomed and Tollesbury B did themselves no harm following up their win against St Mary’s with a 9-1 thrashing of the bottom team. Ed Rudge was their sole winner with King and Lewis once again unbeaten for Tollesbury. This lifts the Blackwater team out of trouble, replaced by Dedham B who drew with them 5-5 when they could only field two players. Dedham were narrowly beaten by Lawford B with their star player Mark Nowers completing his fifth straight maximum. Gt Horkesley D are third from bottom as they also lost to Lawford 7-3 and Pegasus D 6-4 with no player unbeaten. Pegasus C had an excellent 7-3 win over third placed Clairmont, Toby Turner excelling dropping just one set in his three wins.

Colchester’s Junior Boys failed to qualify in last weekends Carter Cup (League representative competition) against two very strong North Middlesex League teams. With Greg Green ruled out through illness Rayne’s Andrew McEwan stepped in at the last minute to join H20 Rowhedge’s Mike Shore and it was Shore who completed an extraordinary five set win against the Middlesex B team number one Stephen Kong in Colchester’s first match. In a pulsating game Kong dominated the final set until Shore came back from 10-8 down to level at deuce. Shore then failed to convert four match points but bizarrely Kong called a time-out when leading 15-14. He then returned to the table only to serve into the net and Shore completed an excellent win 17-15! Next up was Andrew McEwan against the younger precocious talent of Connor Neenan ranked six in England at Under 13 level. McEwan opened a two set lead but was pegged back to two all and eventually won another enthralling match 11-9 in the fifth set. The Colchester pair required to win the doubles to clinch the match before the reverse singles which despite being two sets down and playing together for the for the first time they did in what proved to be the closest of margins. They eventually ran out 3-2 winners but knew they were in for a hard time against the North Middlesex League’s A team. Mike Shore lost the opening game to top thirty ranked Suchira Gallage in three straight sets which meant McEwan had to win his next singles if Colchester were realistically going to progress. He missed out narrowly in five sets as the Colchester pair did 13-11 in the fifth set of the doubles to concede victory however, McEwan pulled off a superb win over Gallage to stop the whitewash losing the match 4-1.