Many table tennis faces missing

Press, 16 April 1980, Page 16

Many table tennis faces missing

By

DAVID LEGGAT

The absence of several regular players of recent seasons has given the 19.80 winter A grade table tennis competition, which begins at the Selwyn Street hall tonight, a decidedly weak look. Among those players who will be missing from the six-team competition this season are Mark Clasper, Les Stewart, Guy Halliburton, Harry Redmond, Graham Gall, Wayne Adamson, Yee Chow Boi, Gary Saunders, Denis Kalin; Alan Campbell, Lloyd Richards and John Yang. There are a variety of reasons for these players being unavailable, but the final result is that there seems certain to be a serious lack of depth. Only six of the top 10 Canterbury men of 1979 will be playing. Two teams, Riccarton I and Avonside I, should be the leading title contenders,

both teams having two of the ranked players last season in their squads. Riccarton I will be led by Stuart Armstrong, who has already had success this season with his second consecutive Easter singles title. He will»be backed up by Simeon Cairns, ranked tenth last season, and Peter de Boer.

The second Riccarton team comprises the agile veteran, John Armstrong, still among the toughest of opponents, Colin Tipper and Graham Lamb.

Avonside I, made up of Maurice Burrowes, for years one of the province’s top players, Bill Scott and the promising young left hander, John Richards, has the strongest all-round combination. Burrowes had a 91.7 per cent success rate last winter, the highest of any player, while Scott had a 54.7 per cent winning aggregate and Richards finished slightly under 50 per cent.

Avonside II has an interesting combination of the experienced Bert Thompson, the New Zealand women’s singles champion, Jan Morris, and the young Martin Kelly. Avonside 111 is certainly not short of knowledge and experience in table tennis. Trevor Flint, Barry

Radford, Neville Brightwell and Ray Mercer could tally up over 100 years experience between them. The Linwood squad could be the surprise team of the competition. Michael Hamel had a fine season in 1979 and will be looking for a continuation of that form, which enabled him to win the South Island singles and the South Canterbury championship titles. His team-mates will be Richard and Stephen Dixon and Michael Prisk, who has made an improvement in the last year and won a place in the national junior coaching school in Auckland last month.