Top Seeds Limp Home in Fixtures Finish Whilst Young Guns Take on QLD
The top two teams kept the players and onlookers guessing right until after the last ball was hit in the final round of the open grade fixture last week at the Leichhardt Park Table Tennis Centre. Going into this final round of matches for the year’s third season the combination of Matthew Pettett, Joel Gifford, Linda O’Sullivan and Dave Milverton were at the top of the leaderboard a handy three points ahead of the combination of Rayden Smith, Glen McDonald and Julien and Oliver Wright as the race towards premiership honours that was to be decided via the first past the post arrangement.
A most interesting element of the situation was that the leading outfit had been without its captain, Matthew Pettett, for the last few weeks of the comp after he came down with a shoulder injury whilst playing in the final of the men’s singles event at the city’s annual closed championships late in August. His team, which enjoyed a commanding seven-point lead on the field at the time, limped on with subs and clearly profited from the unavailability of a few key players from other sides during the period.
In the last outing the frontrunners went down to the team consisting of James O’Sullivan, Cooper Bulow, Chris Leitner and Hilton Kane by seven rubbers to three while Smith’s outfit managed to post a 6-4 victory over the side made up of Joel Coughlan, Monica Deeth, Jeffrey Jordan and Patricia Green.
These results put the two leading teams into a tied situation on the points table and as per the rules of the sport had to be separated via their head-to-head result from when they played earlier in the competition. As Pettett’s outfit won that clash he and his team mates were declared the winners of the premiership leaving Smith’s side needing to line up for the silver medal later in the year at the club’s presentation of trophies function.
Some of the youngsters who turned in some excellent performances at the regional qualifying tournament of the Queensland School Championships in the city during June returned some very impressive results at the state finals recently staged the South Pine Sports Centre at Brendale.
Representing Height’s College, Westyn Finch and Jackson Boon played in the junior section and narrowly missed out on medaling in the division one competition when they came home in fourth spot after narrowly losing their match for the bronze medal. Finch’s younger brother Archie, who along with his brother and Boon take part in the local club’s junior coaching classes, made the trip and was co-opted into a team from Baringa in the lowest section. Young Finch got some invaluable competitive experience whilst subbing for a student who was a late withdrawal as the team made it to the play-offs.
In the open section that caters for older students Wyatt Whittingham and Edlin Chamberlain from Gladstone’s Faith Baptist Christian School continued with the form that won them bronze medals in Rocky’s regional comp when they won the silver in the division two fixture at the state finals. Their school-mates Tyler McLachlan and JJ Pholi, who also qualified for the state play-offs at the local event after winning the silver medal in the junior section, went within an ace of winning the bronze medal at these state finals.
