All To Play For: Semi Finals Begin for Season 4 Fixtures

This week the city’s leading table tennis players will take to the Leichhardt Park playing courts to contest the semi-finals of the open grade fixtures.

Minor premiership honours in the top division have gone to Joel Coughlan, Ann-Louise Stewart and Oliver Wright and they will take on the fourth placed outfit of Jakob Baker, Monica Deeth and Cooper Bulow in the first semi. On the other side of the draw the second placed team of Matthew Pettett, Pam Clarke and Hilton Kane will be pitted against Dane Coughlan, Warun Wilkinson and Patricia Green who came home in third spot in a very bunched leaderboard and the winners of these two matches will face off for the flag next week.

The sides that finished between fifth and eight spot are being placed into a second section and will also be playing off for a premiership. Rayden Smith and Chris and Helga Leitner finished on top and will take on Nick Green, Geoff Geddes and Julien Wright in the first semi show down. Teams consisting of Judd Carr, Erica Nolan and Linda O’Sullivan and James O’Sullivan, Glen McDonald and Jeffrey Jordan will face off in the second semi for the right to play the victor of the other match in next week’s grand final round. Apart from the GFs the unfortunate losers in both sections will also play off next week for final positions on the scoreboard.

There was a host of close finishes in the last round of matches. Patricia Green survived a very serious challenge provided by Oliver Wright. Green won the first two sets both 11-9 then she went down narrowly in the next two prior to the decider where this pair virtually went point for point before the victor won 11-9.

Monica Deeth put a handy win on Joel Gifford in a close tussle over four sets. Deeth, who has had not had much success previously with this opponent played a very patient game and handled the tricky spin provided by Gifford quite impressively.

In the clash of the round Nick Green fell over the line against the tenacious game of James O’Sullivan. In a rubber that quite easily have gone the other way Green played his way out of trouble at various stages to win 9-11, 11-6, 7-11, 11-5, 13-11. In this match Julien Wright beat Jeff Jordan over four good games after the victor lost the first and Glen McDonald prevailed over the defensive plays of Geoff Geddes in another four-set result with tight scorelines.           

In a season where the outcomes of the three doubles ties are so important to sides improvement on the points table this particular match provided a classic example and with Green’s outfit able to register two victories the overall result went 4-2 in their favour.

In the opening encounter O’Sullivan and Jordan edged out Green and Wright 11-9 in the deciding fifth set and then Wright sided with Geddes to win the next tie over Jordan and McDonald by the same score in the fifth. In the last doubles Green teamed with Geddes and they set up another skinny victory over O’Sullivan and McDonald in another very close five-set tussle.