Bath Street Marine Table Tennis Club
A Table Tennis England PremierClub
News Release - BSMTTC News 190
25 April 2025
History Maker?
Could this be a record? BSM team captain, Colin Turner, lifted the Frank Murphy Veterans Handicap Cup for the 4th consecutive time this week! A magnificent achievement.
The Frank Murphy Cup is a competition for Liverpool League table tennis players of all standards who are O40. It mixes players of all standards using a handicap system to even out the skills differences. But handicapping is not an exact science and even with a handicap advantage it can be quite difficult to overcome top quality players! Here is a report on the action in this year's Final.
The Liverpool & District Table Tennis League Frank Murphy Veterans Handicap Cup was on parade for the Final of the 2024/25 competition held at St Andrews Church Hall on Thursday 24 April 2025.
The Action
The Vets Cup Final for 2024/25 featured the CADWA 1st team of Steve Daniels, Alan French and Alby Ofoeme, a mixture of division 3 and division 5 players, against the all division 1 line-up of Bath Street Marine 6, Colin Turner, Barry Elliott & Clare Peers. Attempting to bridge the obvious skills difference between the two sides was a handicap advantage of 150 points in favour of the Cadwa team. Much work would be needed if the cup holders were to retain the trophy as their opponents were certainly no slouches. There was probably no doubt that the 1st division players would win the majority, if not all, of the games, but the question was just how many points could the Cadwa players accumulate in games lost. The BSM players set about their task with relish with relatively straightforward wins in the first 5 sets, cutting the deficit to 40 points. But then there was a slight hiccup at the start of set 6. Momentarily Clare lost focus allowing Steve Daniels to get within 1 point in the first game of the set, a top class effort. But Clare bounced back to life, and stormed through the second game so that by the end of the set the difference was down to 23 points. Set 7 saw captain Colin face the weakest of the Cadwa players, and he showed no mercy, taking the set and clearing the deficit. With 2 sets to play the BSM team had moved into the lead. Alan & Steve continued to fight for every point in the last two sets but couldn't get their noses in front. By the end of set 9 the BSM team had won all 18 games played, had cleared the handicap deficit and Colin once again had his hands on the Frank Murphy Cup!
An excellent night of competitive table tennis. Newly qualified TTE Umpire, Mr Rafal Glowacki was the match umpire, and Roy Cunningham & Janette Hutchings were there to represent the Liverpool League and present the trophy.
Above the match card for the LDTTL Frank Murphy Veterans Handicap Cup Final 2024-25 between,
Cadwa 1 v BSM 6.
To the left the Cadwa 1 team:
Alan French, Alby Ofoeme & steve Daniels.
And below the BSM 6 team of:
Colin Turner, Clare Peers and Barry Elliott.
Barry is in his first season with the club. Julian Quirk also played for the team in earlier rounds.
And the last picture, celebrating the win after presentation of the trophy by Mrs Janette Hutchings (also in the picture) on behalf of LDTTL.
And in conclusion.......
A fantastic achievement by Colin to make it 4 wins in a row in this competition. But how many times has BSM won this trophy in recent years........ answers to Andrew Armstrong! Who has gallantly supported most of our teams in this competition over the 2024/25 season.