Bath Street Marine Table Tennis Club
A Table Tennis England PremierClub

The Action

The week started with a new look team, under the banner of BSM 1, visiting Cadwa to take on Cadwa 1. Dave Aimson led the BSM side comprising all third division players. Mark Benson & Mehdi Eskeroochi joining Dave for this one. Their opponents were quite a mixed side of Ian Burrows, John Moore and Simon Craske. The interesting thing about this match was that overall the handicaps started exactly even! So this was definitely a match that would be decided by the play on the table - not the handicaps! Mehdi, who was a late addition to the BSM team, proved to be the star of the show winning all 6 of the games he played, including an excellent win over the home No.1 Ian Burrows. By the time the match got to the eight set the BSM team were ahead by 42 points, so even a win to zero in the final set wouldn't have been enough for the home side and whilst they did pull some points back in that set it wasn't quite enough. BSM had won 11 out of the 18 games played and once all the points were added up were ahead by 20 points, the final score 400:420 in favour of BSM. 

BSM are the current holders of the Frank Murphy Cup, seen here with last year's winning captain, Colin Turner and the trophy sponsor, Mrs Marjorie Murphy.

Above the match card for  CADWA 1 v BSM 1. To the far left, the BSM 1 team - Mark Benson, Mehdi Eskeroochi & Dave Aimson; and to the immediate left the CADWA 1 team - Simon Craske, John Moore & Ian Burrows.  

The Action

Midweek saw two really good matches. At Marine, there was BSM 2 comprising of the all division 5 line-up of Alan Hale (Captain), Bob Wolstenholme and Billy Smith. Billy has played just 1 league match this season so far and Bob just 2! And they were up against one of the top 1st division players in the form of Ritchie Venner who was teamed up with wife, Susie, and ex-BSM player Ned Hassan of division 3 standard playing as Maghull 1. To say they were outgunned would be an understatement! But the BSM team started with a 237 point handicap advantage! Nevertheless the visitors set about clearing the handicap with relish! But some terrific play by all 3 of the BSM team members meant that by the end of the eight set the visitors were still 35 points behind. But then they had the top man Ritchie to play the final set and he had already won his two previous sets comprehensively! You would have put money on Ritchie winning by a wide enough margin to take the set and the match! Good job you didn't bet on it! Sometimes the luck just goes your way and Bob managed somehow to accumulate 8 points! It meant Ritchie had only clawed back 34 points! Maghull may have won every game of the night, but by the end they were still 1 point behind! An amazing win by Alan and the boys. 

The second midweek match featured BSM 3, led by Peter Crichton with Keith Dudley and Danny Every. They faced Wavertree Labour 1 with the all division 3 line-up of Steve Johnson, Terry Jones & George Liu. The strange feature here was that George had a bigger handicap than any of the BSM players! A clear and obvious error as the VAR referee would say. Nevertheless, the BSM team started overall 29 points ahead. What a match this was with Danny starring for BSM winning 4 out of 6 games. By the end of the eighth set BSM were still ahead, but by just 6 points. It was up to Keith to hang on against the home No.1 in the final set if victory was to be secured. But the home No.1 Steve Johnson can be totally unpredictable and if he gets his big hitting right you are in trouble! So it proved against Keith, the margin 14 points, enough to clear the deficit and leave the Wavertree side 8 points ahead. A terrific match. 

The Action

The final match of the week was the visit of BSM 4 - Dave Stoddern (Captain), Dave Noden & Amir Norouzzi - to Cadwa to play CADWA 2 - Steve Daniels, Alan French & Alby Ofueme. In terms of quality there was very little to separate these two sides, but somehow the CADWA side started 37 points ahead. Points which the BSM boys simply couldn't get back. The home No.1 Steve Daniels starred for Cadwa, with none of the BSM players being able to better him. There were some really good sets, including a draw, but in the end Cadwa won 12 games to 6 for the BSM side. This meant that by the end the CADWA team were still 37 points ahead and had added a further 14 points to finish 430:379 ahead. A good match nevertheless.