Solid Start in Div. 2 South

The De Vere NETTS Team has had a solid start to life in Division 2 South of the Senior British League, following the first weekend held recently in Harlow. Without the team’s best player, Neil Charles, on Day 1 NETTS were perhaps a little surprised to find themselves 4-0 up in the first match against Pavillion 2 (Brighton). The team of Alex Facey, Kevin Read, Nigel Hodder and Peter Hayden were only stopped from whitewashing the Brighton Team when Raphael Marom defeated Read 11-7 in the fifth game. Hayden won the “Player of the Match” award.

Round two’s opponents were Fellow’s Cranleigh of Ilford. This proved much tougher as NETTS lost the first three sets, with Facey unlucky to lose out 9-11 in the fifth game of his match to Zayd Mathoor. Hayden stopped the rot with a fine 9-11, 10-12, 11-9, 11-7, 13-11 win against the former England Number 1 Junior Girl Shelly Uzall (nee Roucco). The reliable Kevin Read then beat Mauthoor 3-1 but in the next match Hodder had no answer to the services of Tony Halling. The next match was critical therefore if Earls Colne based NETTS were to have a chance of saving the match. Alex Facey came through by also beating Uzall in the fifth game to leave the match score at 4-3 to Cranleigh. Hayden therefore needed to beat the unorthodox style of Ray Lam to draw the match. Unfortunately Lam’s defensive skills and surprise attacks were too much for the Hayden on the day, resulting in a 5-3 defeat for NETTS. This was however Hayden’s only defeat of the day.

The seconds days play saw Neil Charles joined by Paul Davison, Kelly Skeggs (now working in a Norwich Law Firm following Graduation from U.E.A) and Hodder again. Round 3 saw a match up against Neil’s old club Ashford 2 (Middlesex) and with two 3-0 wins for Charles against Chelmsford League player Adam Brewer and Robert Lemon and a unexpected win for Davison against the higher ranked Lemon NETTS were hoping for another win. Skeggs and Davison however both lost to the deceptively effective Frenchman Ravelec and with an off key Hodder losing his matches it was left to Kelly to try secure the draw against Antony Johnson. The first two sets were closely fought and gave hope that Skeggs could fight back but it was not to be as Johnson played his best table tennis to take the match 11-8, 11-9, 11-3, resulting in NETTS second narrow defeat of the weekend, 5-3 to Ashford.

In the final match of the weekend Generation 2 (Fareham) were the opponents. After an easy win for Charles, Davison disappointed in his match losing 3-1 to wily old fox Roger Hookey to leave the match at 1-1. From there however NETTS took control with victories from Skeggs, Hodder and Charles again. Match six however went against a now more inform Hodder in an epic match as from 2-0 down the Ipswich based player took the next two sets, only narrowly missing out 18-16 in the fifth. Unusually for the hard hitting Hodder, it was his normally reliable smash that let him down at the end! Playing under pressure to secure the victory Davison and Skeggs won the last two matches 3-0 with Skeggs impressing sufficiently to take the “Player of the Match Award”. Final result 6-2 to NETTS.

NETTS can therefore be fairly happy with weekend one but with definite room for further improvement and with the teams number two Minda Sinkus still to play his first match the team can look forward to some more positive results in Weekend 2. This takes place on the weekend of 11/12 December at BATTS, Harlow once more. Supporters welcome!