The Cream Rises To The Top In Carnation Cup

The season took another break from league action this week to make way for The Carnation Cup which is the only pairs competition that the league holds. This year's competition started off with two preliminary round matches to see who would reach the quarter final stages. Dave Hodgkin and Jack Tarr were unfortunate to come up against two players who are bang in form in their respective divisions in Tom McIntosh and Clive Eden who both proved just too good on the night and comfortably eased their way into the next round with a 5-0 victory. In the next round they will meet John Hallgarth and Mark Bloomer who managed to overcome Peter Eyre and Daniel Cutts in a match that was much closer than the 4-1 score line suggests. Because of their preliminary round matches they were unable to complete their quarter final match which will now be concluded on the next designated Carnation Cup night in three weeks time.
Three quarter final matches however were concluded on the night with the pick of the bunch being the game between Andy Lee & Regan Langley and Sarah Short & Dave Rix which could have gone either way with some very close games with probably the pivotal game being the win for Rix over Langley which put Rix and Short 2-1 ahead with Short sealing the match by beating Lee in the next game before going on to win 3-2.
Another match that ended 3-2 was the game between Rob Vaughan & Nathan Langley and Kyle McIntosh & Andy Kirkland with the latter pairing going through to the semi finals after playing the better table tennis on the night. Kirkland had good wins over both Vaughan and Langley, with McIntosh also beating Langley it gave them the 3 games required to win the match. Special mention must go to Nathan Langley who despite losing both his singles games played extremely well in the doubles to end the night on a high despite going out of the competition.
The last quarter final saw Garry Scott & Matt Williams team up to register an impressive 4-1 win over Jack Kirkland & Keith Swift to leave the draw for the semi finals as follows:  S.Short & D.Rix v G.Scott & M.Williams and K.McIntosh & A.Kirkland v T.McIntosh & C.Eden or J.Hallharth & M.Bloomer.
Staying with the theme of Cup Competitions three more matches were decided this week in the Handicap Shield with the closest match by far being between the Zygabytes and DTH Redlands Outlaws. Dean Brookes for the Zygabytes returned maximum points which in the end proved to be vital to the outcome of the match. Chris Cattell was the stand out player yet again for the Outlaws and managed to beat both Joe Zygadlo and Bob Hume but it wasn't enough to stop the Outlaws going down by 355-347 after the handicap was added at the end.
Ryton Park Dragons carried on where they left off last week, after winning their first ever league match they went and did again this week by beating DTH Redlands Rascals in the Handicap Shield! The Dragons trio of Justin Flear and Luke and Lee Banton at times haven't enjoyed the best of times on the table and thoroughly deserve their recent success. They didn't have it all their own way against the Rascals team of Macauley Bartop, Liam Stead and Ellis Spacey and actually lost the match on the night 324-285 but when the 80 point handicap was added at the end of the game to the Dragons score it meant they went through to the next round by 365-324.
The final Handicap Shield game of the week saw DTH Fluffy Toys start with a player short against club colleagues DTH Redlands X-Youth and if that wasn't enough to scupper any chance of a victory Richard Wesley had to retire through injury after only playing one game and after perhaps coming back too soon after breaking his hand recently. The final result being 524-159 in favour of X-Youth who move into the next round.
Division Three Results: Ryton Park Cougars 9 DTH Redlands Rascals 1, Ryton Park Dragons 8 Centre For Sport 2