The third round of North London Region National Junior League matches for 2016/17 was held at Ellenborough TTC, Enfield on Saturday 4 February 2016. After the first two rounds of matches due to injury and family commitment to Harrison Matthews it looked as though the A Team would again only have two players when his dad pulled him out of the last two rounds of matches to concentrate on revision for exams. At the Chelmsford Tournament Buttsbury’s Matthew Elliott accepted my offer for him to play in the Chelmsford Team with Connor Payne and Matthew Laws. 

The team’s first match was against Fusion 1. Connor opened up a 2-0 lead over Joshua Bruce, lost the third game heavily and had three match points to win the fourth game but lost that 13-11 and the decider 11-6. Matthew Laws lost his match to Stephen Domingo 3-0 and then in his debut match Matthew Elliott beat Hugo Dodd 12, -9, 8,7. In his match against Stephen, Conner failed to convert any of half a dozen game points to a deciding game when losing that fourth game 16-14. Conner got his win against Hugo 3-1 after losing the first game for a 2-7 team defeat. 

Their next match was against third placed BATTS 1. Both Connor and Matthew Laws had good 3-0 wins over George Campbell and Matthew Elliott a four game win over Jaz Harvey after losing 11-8 in the decider with Samuel Flaum. Connor went on to beat Samuel 3-0 and a deciding game 11-8 win in the last match over Jaz for a 5-4 match win. 

They then played Warren Spring A where seven of the nine matches were won 3-0, Chelmsford’s only win being Connor’s win over Thomas Ronayne. Connor and Matthew Elliott both lost in four games to James Hamblett. A 1-8 defeat. 

For their last match they played Ellenborough A, one point below them at the bottom of the Table. Connor led the Team to victory with wins over Dylan Franks -8, 5, 10, 11, Thomas Charnock -3, 5, -11, 2, 8 and Daniel Thomas -5, 6, 11, 8 with support from Matthew Elliott’s two wins over Daniel, -11, 9, 8, -4, 7 and Dylan 7, -9, 9, 5 and Matthew Laws’ win over Dylan 2, 2, 6. A 6-3 win. 

A Team.          Connor Payne 8 out of 12: Matthew Laws 2 out of 12 and Matthew Elliott 4 out of 12.

For the B Team all four players were keen to play so selection was rotated so that each player played in three of the four rounds of matches. 

The B Team’s first match was against BATTS 2 with Adam Chalk, Jamie Penkman and Aidan Noguchi selected to play. A poor start with BATTS winning the first five matches before Jamie claimed a nail biting win over Alex Howard 7, -6, -7, 3, 10. and twelve years old Aidan beat Essex Schools Under 13 Boys Runner Up Jake Harvey 9, 5, -7, 3. With Adam and Jamie losing the last two matches to Alex and Ben Sivathanu it was a 2-7 defeat. 

For the second match against Fusion 3 Harry Rogers played instead of Aidan. For Jamie his opening match was another nail biting match only this time he lost 11-13 in the deciding game with Zach Rivan and Adam and Harry lost very close opening matches to Emeka Chanekwu and Jian Hui Mo respectively. Adam also lost his second match but Jamie scored the first win for the team beating Jian 3-0. Harry just failed to add another win losing to Emeka 11-7 in the deciding game but beat Zach 3-1 and Adam beat Jian 3-1. The last match was another nail biter for Jamie against Emeka, coming back from 2-0 down only to lose the deciding game 12-14. A 3-6 defeat which might have been a 5-4 or 6-3 win. 

In the third match Aidan played instead of Jamie against Warren Springs C, the bottom team in the Division. 3-0 wins to start with for Adam and Harry and for Aidan he took over Jamie’s mantle of nail biting matches, three of them in this match. -8, 6, -7, 10, 9 over Deni George-Ochelli, -6, -8, 5, 5, 8 over Charlie McDevitt and 9, -7, -5, 8, 6 over George Thorn. Harry also beat George 7, -10, 5, -10, 10 and Deni 3-1. Adam beat Charlie 3-0 but lost to Deni 3-1. Thus an 8-1 win with the reverse of the luck from the previous match.  

Their last match was against the Division leaders Mossford B. Adam having played his three matches left for home and Jamie came back in to the team. Six matches were lost 3-0, Aidan and Harry both lost to Abdul Raqeeb 3-1 and Aidan was closest to a win when losing to Muhammad Saleh 4, 10, -10, -10, 10. 

B Team           Harry Rogers 4 out of 9, Jamie Penkman 2 out of 9, Adam Chalk 3 out of 9 and Aidan Noguchi 4 out of 9.

DIVISION 1 TABLE                         

The match between Mossford A and Fusion 1 had not finished when we left. The Mossford Team were leading 5-1 at the time .

The final round will be three matches on Saturday 25 February 2017 and finishing time is likely to be around 3.30pm.

Looking back over the days play Graham Spicer won all their matches and have already won the Division 1 title. In Division 2 Mossford B need to win their three matches to guarantee them the Division 2 Title. The Chelmsford Teams have avoided being bottom of their respective Divisions.

The Chelmsford players Connor Payne and Matthew Laws were pleased that Matthew Elliott had joined the A team and contributed to the team’s two wins on his debut. The final round of matches will be tough for them as they have the top two teams to play and Matthew Laws will be unable to play due to a family commitment

Arthur C Clark

Chelmsford Junior Match Secretary