O'Sullivan Takes on the Nation in Albury

James O’Sullivan is currently enroute to Albury in New South Wales where he will be the Rockhampton Table Tennis Association’s sole representative at the annual Australian Veterans Championships. The stalwart of the local club qualified for selection for Queensland in the men’s over-60 A-team after some solid results in tournaments prior to him producing some very good outcomes at the state titles at Moreton Bay during July.

This is the first time he has been available for selection in a state squad during his lengthy involvement in the sport and unfortunately no other club-mates were available for selection at this year’s Aus-Vets. However, apart from his team-mates, he will receive support from wife Linda who is quite an accomplished player but was unavailable for representative commitments and former local player of considerable note in Gerard Watts who now plays for the Gold Coast Association and is a state-rep in the over-70 division.

This year’s Aus-Vets has been taken to country NSW by the national body and will be staged at the Lauren Jackson Sports Centre hitting off this Saturday and winding up on Saturday 24 October.    

O’Sullivan has been in training-mode since being selected in this state team and with the final season for the year in top grade hitting-off last week he was able to fit in some solid matches prior to his departure. In a fixture with a difference where players aren’t in teams but play singles in groups each week with their points accumulated towards individual honours at the end of the season.

In this round O’Sullivan was pitted against a couple of the club’s frontrunners and while he played very well in winning some good quality points against both Rayden Smith and Joel Coughlan, he had to give way to these younger opponents. However, he logged a very good win over Joel Gifford who beat him last time they faced off. In a top of the table effort Smith returned an undefeated scorecard including a narrow victory over Coughlan.        

The next group down saw Nick Green win the table over Ann-Louise Stewart, Monica Deeth and Cooper Bulow. Green was in sound form on the night and won all his matches comfortably but the younger Bulow, who has been playing well, was only able to trouble Stewart who ran him down prior to downing Deeth.

Glen McDonald put an undefeated effort over Jakob Baker, Geoff Geddes and Chris Leitner but really had his work cut out for him versus Baker and only won at deuce. McDonald also struggled when pitted against Leitner and Baker was probably lucky to hold out Geddes with an extended-deuce result.

The experience of Allan Clarke just made the difference on the next court where he won on count-back over both Jeffrey Jordan and Julien Wright after no one was undefeated but Warun Wilkinson failed to beat either of these opponents. Linda O’Sullivan just won the next table down the run over Pam Clarke with Oliver Wright and Sajan Baral coming home in that order and in the last group Patricia Green won on count-back after tying with Helga Leitner who turned in her best performance in a while.