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News Release - BSMTTC News 185
18 January 2025

The Vets are back!

The stage was set this week for the 2nd Round of the 2024/25 Frank Murphy Veterans Handicap Cup competition in the Liverpool & District Table Tennis League. Four teams from the club remain in the competition and all were in action. The Club has a rich tradition of good performance in this competition so they all had a lot to live up too!

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The Event

The Frank Murphy Cup brings together players of varying standard who compete on a handicap basis. But seldom is it the handicap that decides the outcome, more often it is the pure quality of the players on the night. This year the club has some of its top players missing from the line-up in the cup competition, for one reason or another. But once again the winning team captain from last season, Colin Turner, will lead a new-look team into the competition. They come into this round!

 

Below you will find results of all four teams. 

The Action

 

Once again it was captain Dave Aimson who started the week off with his new-look BSM 1 team of himself, Mark Benson, and newcomer to the club, Mehdi Eskoroochi. They faced a strong, but mixed ability, team from Waterloo & Bootle which included 2 division 2 players. And what a match this was! With the BSM team featuring an all division 3 player line-up they started, as might be expected, with a handicap advantage, of 58 points. It has to be said this was probably quite a generous handicap advantage! On the table however, there were some terrific sets, with only 3 out of the 9 sets having a decisive 2:0 outcome - in a format where each set is just 2 games each played up to 21 points. Just how close this match was can be seem from the overall division of games won and lost. A match comprises of 18 games, and in this match BSM won 10 and Waterloo & Bootle 8. It might have been expected that the 2 Div 2 players of the visitors would win all of their singles, but this certainly wasn't the case as the scorecard shows. The games were so close that by the end of 18 games the visitors had only been able to take 5 points off of the BSM handicap advantage, that's how well the BSM team played. And the outcome, a sparkling win by Dave's side by 53 points. Both Dave & Mehdi were able to win 4 out of 6 of their games, quite an accomplishment against quality players. A great night of table tennis and one team through!    

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BSM are the current holders of the Frank Murphy Cup. Last season it took 3 Div 1 players to lift the trophy, so how will the teams do this year with some of the top players missing from the team sheets?

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Above the match card for  BSM 1 v Waterloo & Bootle 1. And to the left both teams:
BSM 1 - Mark Benson, Dave Aimson and Mehdi Eskoroochi:
Waterloo & Bootle 1 - Eddie Preston, Aleksandr Charcenko and Shakil Malik. 

All of the players contributed to an excellent night of table tennis and a very even contest.
And below, the scorecard for the BSM 5 match.

The Action

 

The stage was set on Tuesday for what should have been a very close and competitive match. BSM 5, led by Andy Armstrong, against Sefton Park 2. With the Sefton team featuring a line-up mostly from division 4 there was every chance of success for BSM if they could field a reasonable quality team. Indeed it looked as if that was the case! When two top players withdrew from the BSM line-up Ray Hibbs and Amir Norouzzi were drafted in, giving what looked like a line-up very capable of competing with the Sefton Park team. However just before the start of the match it was realized a serious error had occurred, as it had been overlooked that Amir had already played for another BSM team in this competition and was therefore ineligible to play in this match! It meant that 126 points were given to the opponents, when in reality the handicap difference should have been just 6 points in favour of the visitors! In the old TV series, 'Allo! Allo!', the Italian Captain Bertorelli is often heard to say "what a mistaker to maker'! It certainly applied to the actions of the Club Secretary for this match! On the table the two eligible BSM players, Andrew and Ray played some great table tennis with Ray winning all six of his games and Andrew 3 out of 6. But once the 126 points given away were taken into account the Sefton Park team were ahead by 112 points! Nothing short of a disaster!

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Above: Left, the Sefton Park 2 team of Roy Cunningham, Jamie Whitty and Pat Espinoza; And on the right the BSM 5 team of Ray Hibbs, Andrew Armstrong and Amir Norouzzi (who was in fact ineligible to play!). The match card is above right.

The Action

 

Alan Hale's BSM 2 team pulled off a fabulous win in Round 1, could they match it in Round 2? Their guests at Marine were Sefton Park 1, a team of mixed ability combining players from division 2 and 4. Alan kept the same line-up as the 1st round with Billy Smith & Bob Wolstenholme joining him for the encounter. The BSM team started the match with a handicap advantage of 132 points but the visitors started straight away to reduce it. Indeed it wasn't until the seventh set that the BSM boys won their first game, with Billy Smith taking an end from Ray Jones. But by the end of that set the points were just about even, Sefton Park just 5 points behind with 4 games left to play. But neither Alan nor Bob could dent the ambitions of their opponents in the final two sets allowing the Sefton Park players to overcome the handicap disadvantage and come away with a resounding win 444:483. The cup run ends for Hales Heroes.

The final match of the week should have brought the cup holders to the table with Colin Turner leading his new look BSM 6 team on a visit to Merseyside Police. But as it happened the Police were unable to field a full team and conceded the match. So, the Cup Holders still haven't had to play a match in this year's competition having obtained a bye in Round 1!

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On the left , the BSM 2 team of Bob Wolstenholme, Alan Hale & Billy Smith. Followed by the match card of BSM 2 v Sefton Park 1. Sefton Park win both matches on their visits to Marine this week!

And in conclusion.......

Well a 50/50 week as far as cup results are concerned, but at least the club will be in the pot for the Quarter Final round.

© BSMTTC 2015 

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