Ashford start well in Senior British League 2018-19
By ATTC Webmaster on Sep 12, 2018 with Comments 0
The new Senior British League (SBL) table tennis season kicked off on the weekend of the 8th/9th September.
Ashford are playing in National Division C-5 and all matches are played at Fareham Academy, Fareham.
Ashford’s SBL team consisted of Farhat Rasul (“Raz”), Artur Lopata, David Rahbani and Tony Egan. On Sunday Winston Wong played instead of Artur.
Ashford vs Horsham TTC
The first match on Saturday morning against Horsham was a match of two halves with Ashford storming to a 4-0 halfway lead with a good win by Artur after being 2 games down.
In the second half, Horsham fought back to 4-3 but then Artur and Tony won their games, Tony winning after being 2-0 down, making the final score 6-3 to Ashford.
Ashford vs Horsham Blades II
The Saturday afternoon match was against another Horsham team – Horsham Blades II, who last year had some outstanding Swedish players but this year had a much weaker team.
Again, Ashford got off to a good start taking a 3-1 lead halfway through. Horsham Blades II won the doubles but were overpowered in the remaining 4 games making the final score 7-2.
Both Tony & Artur played well winning all of their games on Saturday.
Ashford vs Haywards Heath I
The Sunday morning match was against Haywards Heath, with Winston replacing Artur.
Ashford got off to a bad start going 3-1 down, with Tony notching up the win.
Haywards Heath won the next 2 games making it 5-1.
Ashford won the final 3 games with fine performances by Tony, Winston and David, but this was not enough and the final score was 5-4 to Haywards Heath.
Ashford vs Godalming Simplynet II
The Sunday afternoon match was against Godalming Simplynet II. Ashford won this quite easily beating Godalming Simplynet II 9-0 with only 3 of the matches going to 4 games.
Weekend Summary
In terms of overall weekend performance, Tony had a good weekend finishing on 100% (8/8), Raz on 50% (4/8), Winston on 75% (3/4), Artur on 100% (4/4), and David on 75% (6/8). These figures may be revised as one of the opposing teams played players out of ranking order and the results against Ashford may be annulled going forward.
Regardless, this was a good Ashford squad performance. There are some good teams in this division but Ashford are good enough to go on and win it.
Next Fixture & Further Information
The next round of SBL matches takes place over the weekend of October 13th/14th 2018.
Further details and information may be viewed on the official TT365 SBL website.
Thanks to Raz for the above report.
Filed Under: British Clubs League • News
About the Author: Published by the ATTC Webmaster
