This year St. Maelruain’s Parish Table Tennis Club entered two teams into the United Churches Table Tennis League. Our first team played in Division 1 and it should be noted that this year there was in fact a Premier League formed to cater for very strong table tennis teams that had entered the league. The team was made up of Andrew Seymour, David Gibbons and Sharon Gibbons while the Club’s second team played in Division 2 and comprised Bobby Wilson, David Gould and Stuart Gould.
A special thanks goes to Claire Burke and Anthony Iyere for acting as substitutes for the second team when Stuart Gould sustained a soccer injury which kept him from playing table tennis for from early in theseason. Our first team finished in 2nd place in Division 1. The Division was won by a strong Castleknock team who did not lose a match all season. We only lost one match ourselves but we had too many draws.
Our second team were again unfortunate that Stuart Gould got an injury, however, as I have already mentioned, Claire and Anthony played in his place throughout the season.
Our second team finished in 2nd place in their Division where Irishtown managed to go through the season dropping only one match to finish top of Division 2. The 2nd team did however win the Cup competition beating a strong York Road team 6 – 3 in the Finals which were held in Rathdown school on 12th April 2008.
Well done also to David Gould won the individuals competition in Division 2. This was an excellent achievement for David given the quality of players in that Division. This year we had an excellent turnout from this Club at the league’s Annual Championships in the Irish Wheelchair Association’s premises in Clontarf. Twelve members of our Club in all participated in the event.
The Championships were held in January and hopefully all of you who played in the tournament enjoyed the days play. Congratulations to Anthony Iyere who won the Mens Open Doubles with his partner Roger Dowds of Raheny and Anthony also won another doubles competition with William Gallagher from York Road. Also, well done to Claire Burke for getting to the finals of the Ladies Open Doubles with her partner Yo Yo Shuang Tu from York Road club.
This year for the 1st time that I can remember in the Club’s history, St Maelruain’s came 2nd in the competition for the Morrison Rose Bowl. This trophy is awarded to the Club whose members win the mostmatches/games atthe Championships. Winners of the Rose Bowl this year were York Road.
The UCTTL’s AGM was held on Wed 16th April in Irishtown. Andrew Seymour stepped down from the position of President of the League having served in the position for the last 3 years. Andrew was appointed Chairman of the league for the coming year while Bobby Wilson was re-appointed to serve on the General Purposes Committee for the coming season. Congratulations to Anthony Iyere who won the Ernie May Memorial Trophy and to Kevin Davis on winning the St. Maelruain’s club trophy.
While there was some fall off in the numbers attending club nights in the new year, given the number of members that we have in the club, I would be hopeful that we will enter a minimum of 2 teams into the UCTTL next season.
Anyone interested in playing league table tennis please let the Match Secretary know as soon as possible next season as there is a tight timeframe between when our Club re-opens and when entries have to be submitted to the League.
To round up the winter season, we organised a night out in Joel'sRestaurant recently and everyone who attended seemed to enjoy themselves.
That’s it for another season…..roll on 2008/2009. – Andrew Seymour
