As the Bournemouth & District Table Tennis league drew to a close last week, two teams from New Milton Table Club were looking forward to playing in higher divisions while another two are unfortunately facing life at a lower level.

The H team (Lewis Reading, Eddie Tompkins, Dave Sutton & Les Smith) were top of Div 4 for the whole of the second half of the season and finished their campaign on a high by beating basement boys Bmth Sports M 8-2 in their own back yard.  Skipper Les Smith (pictured below) was back in action after holidaying in the Antipodes and matched Eddie’s brace of wins to go along with Lewis’ fifth hat-trick of the season.

The club’s dark horses, the G team (Mike Toole, Elliott Storr-Smith & Graham Underwood) snuck quietly into second place of Div 3 five weeks back and occupied that slot for the remainder of the season. They also finished off with a win by beating Merton H 6-4 at the Grange.

The B team (John Millward, Shaun Newcomb & Brian Bickell) finished up second from bottom of the Premier league having spent much of their season in the basement zone. The Bees certainly found life very difficult after losing star player John Hook to an achilles tendon injury early during the second half of the season, and their curtain call was a 10-0 hammering by Winton YMCA A.

In Div 2, the B team (Terry Jenvey, Chris Pusey & Mike Toole) needed to at least draw against second from top Bmth Sports H to give themselves any chance of survival but they lost 3-7 to stay at second from bottom. It was all academic in the end, however, as third from bottom Breamore beat Bmth Sports G to send Milton down instead.

The J team had a “bye” in Div 4 in the final week with second from bottom Nimrod B needing to whitewash Merton K to swap places with Milton and send them down instead. That was a tall order as Nimrod lost 2-8 first time around and so it proved as they lost 3-7, ensuring the Jays survival.  Full results details are below:-

PREMIER

New Milton A 6 Ringwood A 4

(Umit Kaya 2, Steve Hemmings 2, Doug Gerrish 2)

Winton YMCA A 10 New Milton B 0

(Shaun Newcomb 0, John Millward 0, Brian Bickell 0)

DIVISION 1

Bmth Sports D 6 New Milton C 4

(Andy Tipsana 2, Robert Blackmore 1, Graham Underwood 0)

DIVISION 2

New Milton D 3 Bmth Sports H 7

(Chris Pusey 1, Mike Toole 1, Terry Jenvey 1)

North Bmth A 5 New Milton E 5

(Simon Daish 1, Andrew Daish 0, Simon Golding 1)

NB: North Bmth A turned up a player short.

DIVISION 3

New Milton F 6 Ringwood C 4

(Sylvia Smith 1, Steve Cheesman 2, Malcolm Nash 0)

NB: Ringwood C turned up a player short.

New Milton G 6 Merton H 4

(Mike Toole 2, Elliott Storr-Smith 1, Graham Underwood 2)

DIVISION 4

Bmth Sports M 2 New Milton H 8

(Lewis Reading 3, Eddie Tompkins 2, Les Smith 2)

DIVISION 5

New Milton L 2 Winton YMCA E 8

(James Harper 1, Reuben Donvito 1, Bill Collinge 0)