Team Handicap Knock Out Cup - Season 2007-2008:

The Final - North Fire A win cup

The final of the 2007-2008 Team Handicap KO Competition was later this season as one of the players was recovering from minor surgery. Happily he was well and able to play in the which took place at Byker Community Centre on Thursday evening the 17 July.

From an original entry of 60 teams the 2 teams progressing to the final were North Fire A and Ouston B.

The North Fire trio was Brian Illingworth, Bob Appleby and Clive Dewison a well experienced team of veterans who have been playing in the premier Division during the winter. By Brian’s calculation’s they have 190 years of life experience between them!

The Ouston B team, Pete Scott, Josh Scott and Neil Badger, shared a much lower life span but did have the experience of winning this competition in the 2006-2007 season. Their aim was to win the competition in successive years. By coincidence the last team to do this was their opponents, North Fire A, in the early 1990’s.

Handicaps for the Competition are based on the competitors record in the previous season. With their rapid improvement in the previous season the Ouston players carried a heavier handicap than they did since winning the cup last year. Never the less they had some useful starts over the North Fire players. All games in the competition are played under the old scoring system of 21 points and the best of 3 ends.

The first game of the evening was between Clive Dewison and Josh Scott, the youngest player in the match.. The handicap system gave Scott a start of 13 points. In the first end Scott had great difficulty coping with Dewison’s services and slow rolled ball returns in open play and lost 18-21. The second end saw Scott improving in confidence and playing a more controlled game he almost took the end before losing to Dewison, 21-23.

The second game of the evening was between Fire’s Bob Appleby and Ouston’s Neil Badger. Playing very much in the defensive style of father (Norman) and with a 10 point start over his opponent Badger proved too strong for Appleby and won in two end, 22-20 and 21-15 to bring the overall score to 1-1.

Next on the table was Brian Illingworth versus Pete Scott (Josh’s father), with Illingworth conceding an 8 point start. Scott senior got off to a flying start winning the first 3 points to make it 11-0 to him. After that Illingworth got stuck in and in a game of long rallies won through 21-15. The second end was in a similar vein with Illingworth winning 21-15 and the match score moving to 2-1 to North Fire.

The fourth game saw Appleby play Josh Scott giving him a 13 point start. This time Scott had no difficulty in returning the service and played well to win in 2 ends evening out the match score to 2 all.

Game five saw Dewison against Scott (senior). Dewison overcame the 9 start he gave away to win in 2 ends. Score was now North Fire 3 Ouston 2.

The next two games saw Illingworth beating Badger in 2 ends and Appleby beating Pete Scott in what was the only game going the full 3 ends. This victory brought the score to 5-2 in favour of North Fire A making them the winners.

Alan Hedley , a Director of Northumberland Table Tennis and Chairman of Cramlington Table Tennis Club presented the Cup to the winning team and individual winner and runner up trophies to the players from the two teams.

Thanks go to Byker Table Tennis Club for the use of their premises and especially to Steve Dickinson, Byker, who scored the first four games.