All To Play For: Final Week of Fixtures Indicates Close Finish
Only one round of competition matches remains for the teams to improve their finishing places in the open grade table tennis fixture at the Leichhardt Park playing centre and the most interest will certainly be which side wins the flag in the first past the post situation.
Currently the team consisting of Matthew Pettett, Joel Gifford, Linda O’Sullivan and Dave Milverton sit at the top of the list an imposing three points ahead of the combination of Rayden Smith, Glen McDonald and Julien and Oliver Wright with the next side in line that is lead by Joel Coughlan only a solitary point behind.
The situation with the leading outfit is quite incredible as for the last couple of outings the captain has not been available after suffering a shoulder injury whilst playing in the final of the men’s singles event at the city’s annual closed championships. Whilst Pettet’s team could have been severely inconvenienced on the score-board by his absences it hasn’t been due to unavailability of key players who Pettett would have been pitted against had he been taking part. As a result the margin at the top of the leaderboard is less than it was a few weeks ago but, in reality, the frontrunners could hold on to win the premiership this week.
Close contests and impressive performances in the last round of matches included Glen McDonald’s very good win over the in-form Ann-Louise Stewart 11-8 in the deciding fifth set and if this upset wasn’t enough to satisfy him on the night he then went on to create an unlikely victory over Nick Green 11-9 in the decider of a very entertaining clash to net McDonald with his best results since joining the fixture.
Monica Deeth, who has been playing quite well lately, recorded a very good win over Joel Gifford across a long five game encounter after she lead two sets to one including recovering after dropping the opening game. Linda O’Sullivan and Patricia Green created a marathon encounter where O’Sullivan fell over the line in the decider after trailing one-two earlier on to win 12-10, 10-12, 9-11, 11-9, 11-8.
Geoff Geddes survived a scare proved by the much less experienced Julien Wright and they went game for game and with the more fancied Geddes leading two-one Wright put himself back in contention with a 12-10 win in the fourth set after his opponent appeared to have a handy lead. The victor deployed plenty of tactics in the decider and they paid off.
Chris Leitner returned to the winner’s circle with an untroubled win over Sajan Baral and a tight four set victory over Warun Wilkinson. These statistics will assist with his individual average as the season winds up. In this match Hilton Kane beat Baral over four sets which was a handy win.
At the state finals of the Queensland School Championships on Monday at the South Pine Sports Centre at Brendale Westyn Finch and Jackson Boon, who were representing Height’s College, did very well in a tough competition. In their section they came home in fourth spot in division one after competing for the bronze medal in the final rounds.
