PREMIER / DIV 1 ROUND-UP WEEK 1
Published 25/09/2023 at 17:05:13 by David Wackrill.
PREMIER“WHEN WE WERE KINGS"
A change of club and a rebranding exercise sees the reigning champions reinvent themselves as MK Titans, no change in personnel though.
The Titans started the campaign on Tuesday night back at their old Greenleys venue against promoted Glory, who have strengthened their squad considerably with the signing of Northampton star Ian Mead. Ian took out Guy Sparrow and Nick Howard before going down in a 5-game thriller to Craig Brown. With Ian also taking the doubles partnering Jacob Midson a 3-7 defeat was a respectable opening scoreline for the Glory boys, who also included Ian Brown here.
Meanwhile Greenleys Monarchs take centre stage, heading the table with a 10-0 win over MK Phoenix. All one-way traffic with straightforward wins from Tomek Nowakowski, Martin Hall and Dave Beddall. Phoenix went with Gerald Ridgway, Ivor Howard and Div 1 reserve Abhay Tijare. Phoenix look like struggling again this season while Monarchs will have eyes on the title.
It’s all change at the Leighton Buzzard club with the departure of Biao Wang and the creation of a new team, Generations, with Van Hire relegated from the Premier. Tim Cheek has joined the Generations side directly from their opening opponents MK Spinners, after a dozen years of faithful service, and teamed up with Javier Goh and Ben Rolfe for this match. Spinners made the Friday night journey to Wing with Alan Cherry, Jecu Aurelian and Div 3 sub Paul Tompkins but came away with a 6-4 win. Generations 4 sets came at the expense of Paul plus a Javier win over Jecu. There are now more ex-Spinners in the League than current ones with Tim at Generations, Craig Brown at Ttitans, Michael Wilkins at Sasaki and Bub Burman at Chackmore Hasbeens!
Only the 3 matches this week as Greenleys Warriors didn’t turn up for their Tuesday fixture with MK Sasaki. A decision on the ‘deemed result’ is to be made at the October League committee meeting.
Player of the week : Craig Brown
DIVISION 1
SHARK ATTACK SEALS TOP SPOT
MK Sharks sit in their highest ever position in MK League on Thursday after a whitewash win over Open University Primes took them to Div 1’s top spot in the opening week. Buoyed by their big Summer signing of former Powers star player Sarah Hudson, regulars Rupert Greyling and Derick Rodrigues matched her treble contribution despite a few scares along the way. Ning He got the closest to a Primes win, going down deuce in the 5th game against Derick. Andy Tan and James Zeng were the other Primes.
Two similarly structured drawn matches were played out at MK Centre on Wednesday night where the visitors snatched a share of the spoils in the deciding games of the final sets on each occasion. While this was hardly unexpected in the MK Pumas/Leighton Buzzard Avengers encounter, as the sides had finished adjacent to each other in the League last season, it came as a big surprise in the MK Topspin/ Chackmore Hasbeens match as the respective teams were 2 divisions apart last term, Topspin in the Premier and Hasbeens in Div 2.
Adam Snowdon has now joined Mum Julie’s Pumas side and acquitted himself well in this tough opener for the MK side, seeing off Richard Hardy and Bernie Raffe before losing out to hat-trick man Alex Du Noyer in that deciding game finish. Julie (2 wins) and Chris Belton (1) completed the Pumas scoring while Avengers other successes came from Bernie Raffe (1) and in the doubles.
My MK Topspin team brought back Jiten Pitamber (another ex Power player) into the Topspin fold after a 7 year absence and he duly delivered a maximum. I bagged a brace but that was the extent of the Topspin scoring with Russell Penn winless. For Hasbeens ex-Prem man Bub Burman (2), a win a-piece from Andy Whitehead an Sam Willett plus the customary Bub/Andy doubles success earned a good draw for the team from Chackmore.
Leighton Buzzard Van Hire’s scheduled match with Greenleys Princes has been rearranged for 2 January.
Player of the week : Alex Du Noyer