Home advantage counts for little

Table tennis

Challock B and Ruckinge B are the early pacesetters in Division 2 of the Ashford & District Table Tennis League.

Ruckinge B, fresh from an opening week win over Hamstreet, visited Sportsmen A, who were making their seasonal debut.

It was an occasion when home advantage counted for little as Ruckinge duo James Horton and Mike Holiday both ended the night with unblemished records to help set up a 9-1 victory.

Horton overcame the resilient Julian Thorne in straight sets, before edging out Douglas Ho 15-13 in a fifth leg decider.

Howard Brightling did manage to take a leg off Horton, but never looked like troubling the Ruckinge player.

Holiday had few problems beating both Brightling and Thorne 4, 8 and 9, but early exchanges with Ho went the way of the Sportsmen player who took a 2-0 lead (12-10, 11-6).

In a cagey third leg Holiday benefited from a little luck at the right moment to take it 14-12. From then on the match was spoilt by nets and edges, with Holiday coming through 11-3, 11-2 in a falsely convincing scoreline.

Chris Cloake, playing his first match since the end of last season, got the better of Brightling 3-0, and Thorne 3-1.

He also fought back against Ho to force a fifth leg (a third in total for Doug), but this time the home player had enough in the tank to take the fifth 11-5 and secure the only singles point of the evening for Sportsmen.

Cloake and Horton then combined well in a 3- 1 win over Ho and Brightling.

On paper Challock B look the strongest team and they have a one point lead over Ruckinge after winning away to Little Chart Posties.

Colin Price started brightly, taking the first leg from Cliff Ball, but seasoned campaigner Ball took the next three with relative ease.

John Jarvis levelled the match with a harder fought win over Bob Baker with the points won over the first four legs being spilt 44-43!

The fifth leg promised much but the Little Chart player put in a first class display and quickly pulled clear to register a 11-4 win.

Nigel Griffiths was in action in two of the next three games and only dropped one leg with wins over Brian Milner (3-0) and Colin Price (3-1).

Sandwiched in between Jarvis lost 3-1 in a tight match with Ball 3-1, the results putting Challock 4-1 up.

Brian Milner was able to brush aside Bob Baker (3-0) to give the Posties hope, but that was soon extinguished as Griffiths beat Jarvis 3-1, Ball Beat Milner 3-1, and Baker edged past Price 3-2.

A 3-0 victory for the Challock pairing of Ball and Griffiths over Milner and Price sealed an 8-2 win.

Community Ping Pong sessions continue at Repton Connect and are open to all every Thursday evening from 8pm.