There was a break in the Bournemouth & District Table Tennis league as last week was given over to the Preliminary Round of the annual Times & Directory Handicap Cup competition. Nine of the New Milton Club’s twelve teams were entered into the Cup, but only the M team were drawn into the Preliminary Round and that was short-lived.

The M team who usually ply their trade in Div 5 travelled to Southbourne a player short to play against Div 1’s Merton D (Alan Solomons, Ian Robertson & Dave Chapman). Captain Stuart Burton had a +15 start against all three Merton players and Maggie Brown had the slightly lower start of +13. Burton got things off to a good start by beating Solomons 21-17, 21-18, but Brown lost 16-21, 17-21 to Robertson in the next match.

Burton (pictured below) went on to beat Robertson and Chapman to complete an excellent captain’s hat-trick, and Brown saw off Chapman fairly comfortably. With the 3 game deficit this meant that Brown needed to beat Solomons in the final match of the evening to proceed to the next round. She took the first convincingly 21-11, but then Solomons wised up and won the next two 21-18, 21-17 to keep Merton in the Cup at Milton’s expense.

The M team live to fight another day however as they now go into the consolation “Plate” competition.