Some of the island’s top table tennis players travel to the UK this weekend to play in the Senior British Club Leagues.
Two squads will head to Widnes in Cheshire to compete at the Halton Regional Table Tennis Centre.
The first team is unchanged from last season and is dominated by individuals that made up the successful Inter-Insular Green Trophy team in the form of Ben Foss, Joshua Stacey, Lawrence Stacey and Ryan Bichard, who was the man of the match in that big clash. Lawrence is unavailable for the first weekend of action and defending Island Over 50’s Men’s Doubles champion, Andy Gill, will be stepping in to reserve.
The second team consists of Jamie Ferbrache, Joseph Bourgaize, Matthew Casey, and Sam Clark, with Connor Powell set to play in the third round of fixtures in December, due to the absence of Bourgaize.
Guernsey 1 has been competing in National A-1 for the past few seasons, the third tier of the pyramid, behind the Premier and Championship Divisions. Last season they finished fifth and will be hopeful of improving upon that following a number of narrow defeats last time out.
Four of the other seven teams competed in this Division alongside Guernsey last season.
Among the new clubs to the Division is eBaTT 1, who are a table tennis club from London, guided by Eli Baraty, who is registered as the number three player. Baraty is a leading table tennis coach in England and also an ITTF qualified coach. Their highest ranked player is Sammy Kaye, who is just outside the top 50 in the English Senior Men’s list.
Another of the new clubs is Butterfly Lilleshall 1 and on paper they look like they could be very hard to beat. Their leading player is Ferenc Horvath, who is equivalently ranked 36 in the Senior Men’s rankings, while they also have Veterans Michael O’Driscoll and Paul Cicchelli, ranked 58 and 64, respectively.
The final new club is Allied TTC and this is led by England Number 44 Rhys Davies and also contains a familiar face in the ninth best Veteran in England, Ritchie Venner. Venner competed in Guernsey over the weekend at the Veterans Home Nations competition and won team gold and Men’s Doubles alongside Darren Griffin in the Over 50’s category. He also claimed a silver in the Over 50’s Men’s Singles, losing out narrowly in five sets to England’s third best veteran Jason Ramage.
East Midlands TTC 1 have Lewis Waddup and Jersey’s Luke Greenfield in their line-up, both players ranked inside the top 50, whilst Draycott 1 have England number 42 Artur Veeck Caltabiano and the returning Naphat Boonyaprapa. Boonyaprapa is a former winner of the English National Junior Boys Doubles and a former England representative.
Guernsey 2 share the Division with a number of the same teams as last season, including Isle of Man.
Newcomers Birmingham TTA 1 appear to be strong on paper as their top player Edward Lynn is ranked just outside the top 150 in the English Men’s rankings.
There are also a few unknowns in the form of Scottish clubs Ward Road Warriors – Dundee and Aberdeen and District.
The top-flight Doric Insurance sponsored senior leagues locally start the following week.
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