Some fantastic table tennis was on display down at the Mudeford Wood Community Centre as the New Milton Club held their annual Tournament Finals Night. During the proceedings, the A team’s Phil Handy deprived Premier team mate Steve Hemmings of two of the three titles that he won last year.

Before the finals got underway however there were some of the semi-finals to get out of the way first. Peter Daish saw off younger brother Matthew in the Under 40s (Handicap) and Zac Dowling got the better of Bobo Jiang. In the Over 40s (Handicap) Steve Hemmings disposed of Max De Kment in two straight sets and Julie Smillie did likewise to Roy Hobbs to go through to the final. The Handicap Singles semis saw Peter Daish go through to his second final by beating Shaun Newcomb, and Phil Handy disposed of last year’s winner Hemmings. Handy also booked his place in the Open Singles final by beating Premier team mate Brian Bickell, and Hemmings beat De Kment for the second time that evening.

The Finals kicked-off with Matthew Daish successfully defending his Junior title by beating Zac Dowling. Dowling didn’t get any satisfaction either in the Under 40s (Handicap) as he fell victim to Peter Daish. The Over 40s (Handicap) final saw Julie Smillie give a very good account of herself against last year’s winner Steve Hemmings, but his defensive play was far too dogged for her. Read the rest of this entry →

Well folks, when Julie asked if I would help at a presentation at New Milton Junior School’s assembly about the early days of “Whiff Waff”, I didn’t know I was going to have to dress up…I think we all look rather fetching actually……..

Last Wednesday, 30th May, Shaun Newcomb, James Lewis and Julie Smillie went into New Milton Junior School to give a Table Tennis Assembly; this was linked to the School’s Olympic week.
The assembly started with a playlet set in 1880, where ‘Hugo’ (Shaun), ‘Marmeduke'(James) and ‘Reggie'(Julie) were in the Officers’ Mess supping champagne after dinner. The play went on to use the champagne cork as a ball, a cigar case as a bat and then Hugo suggested that the game might be played on a table, with books used as a net. This was to show the children watching that table tennis was indeed first played in this way and was called ‘Wiff Waff’, which echoed the sound of the cigar box wafting, and wiffing and waffing through the air!
It was quite a sight to see all three wearing authentic army uniform over their New Milton TT shirts, but the fake moustaches were quite difficult to keep on!
The assembly then fast forwarded to the present day, showing the children how the bat has developed. The coaches were pretty sneaky and chose an unsuspecting member of staff to try and return sidespin serves, thankfully his returns went everywhere apart from the table!
After a short demonstration of various shots and a competition involving some of the chidren Shaun then told the assembly about GB’s Olympic hopes and of course he then talked about the Paralympic competition.
At the end it was great to be able to advertise our club and give the children details about the new website.
I (Julie) would like to say a huge thank you to both Shaun and James who gave up their valuable time and who were superb in the playlet.
We are hoping to repear the performance at Hordle School in early July.

MESSAGE FROM CLUB CHAIRMAN SHAUN NEWCOMB

As Club Chairman, I am delighted to be able to announce the launch of our new club website today, 1st May. The website was designed by Andrew Daish with inputs and help from the committee, especially Malcolm and Steve. Work has been going on since July 2011 and my thanks go to everybody involved. The website cost just over £200 to design and set up and there will be an ongoing annual cost of c£11 to renew the domain name (www.newmiltonttc.com). Your committee feels that this is money well spent and we hope that you agree once you see the website in all its glory.

This fulfills a commitment made in our Club Action Plan submitted to the ETTA in July 2010 as part of our successful application to become a Premier Clubmark club. We now join the growing ranks of forward-thinking clubs who have their own website and we hope that it will give New Milton Table Tennis Club a higher profile and attract more members.

We have arranged to have links to our new website from the BDTTA and Bournemouth Sports websites in advance of the launch and have already received a number of unsolicited favourable comments from those quarters:- “Really great website, well done. Very clear and easy to navigate”. “The NMTTC website looks great. Really impressive!”. We are proud of our efforts and hope that you will agree.

All New Milton Club members and friends who are on Malcolm’s email contacts list should receive an invitation to subscribe to the website. You just have to click on “Accept Invitation” to subscribe to receive notices of club news and events. You will then receive confirmation that you will receive an email notification when a new “post” is made to the website. You can unsubscribe at any time, but why would you want to when you can be kept informed of the club’s activities completely free of charge?

Andrew Daish will remain as “Administrator” of the site so if you have any problems in subscribing or have any queries at all, please give him a call on 01590 679268.

We want to keep the website as vibrant and up to date as possible and all of the committee members will have the facility to post items. Remember, this is the club’s website, not just the committee’s so if you can think of any areas that can be improved or would like to see other types of information, please put your thoughts down on an email and send them to me.

Matthew Daish has become the new Under-11 ESTTA champion! The 11-year-old beat James Smith (seeded 1^st) in the fifth to win the prestigious title of ‘National Champion’.

Matthew (whose progress was streamed live on the New Milton TTC site) started the day at 9am by beating his first opponent Harry Nicholls in straight games: 11-6 11-8 11-6. His second opponent in the group stages was Aalhad Kulkarni who again he beat in straight games: 11-6 11-2 11-6. Matthew’s next opponent was Ben Worley who was a little tougher than the last two but Matthew struggled and achieved another win: 11-9 11-8 14-12.

After an hour and a half wait Matthew returned to the stage to face his next opponent Gruff Mattias who was standing in for no-show Louis Simmons. Daish thrashed Mattias: 11-4 11-5 11-2. Matthew’s last opponent in the group stage was Timothy Kilbey. Matthew struggled in the first game but came back and beat Kilbey: 11-8 11-2 11-5.

Almost two hours passed till Matthew was called up for his quarter- finals match against Amir Hussan. Again, Matthew struggled in the first game, lost the second and the third but managed to come back to win fourth and fifth: 13-11 3-11 6-11 11-5 11-1.

On to the semi-finals and Matthew’s opponent was 11 year old Joey Chen who was playing well in his matches that day. Joey though couldn’t stand up against Daish resulting in another 3-0 win for Matthew beating Chen: 11-8 11-9 11-5.

4pm heralded the Under 11 final: Matthew Daish vs. number one seed James Smith and one spectacular final to come! Smash after smash Matthew ending up winning a tight first game. He held on but couldn’t sustain the momentum and lost the next two games which left Matthew 2-1 down. In the fourth (and possibly last game for Matthew) the opponent called “time out” though winning 13-12.  In a dramatic turn of events following the” time out” Matthew persevered under extreme pressure and came back to win the fourth 15-13. The fifth and final game came down to the wire with scores even at 10-10. Smith tried to loop the ball past Matthews backhand but failed with the ball flying over the edge of the table putting Matthew in the lead. Matthew won the next point to seal the victory and the title of National Champion.

Final scores: 11-9 0-11 6-11 15-13 12-10

Katie Holt and Daisy Kennard also participated in the National Tournament.

Katie won 2 and lost 2 in the group and only just missed out going through on countback as two players won 2 lost 2. She had good wins against Katie Shephard 3-2 and Anna Raymakers 3-1.

Daisy Kennard in the U16 girls battled hard in all her matches and played extremely well.