CROYDON TABLE TENNIS LEAGUE
(Affiliated to Table Tennis England and Surrey T.T.A.)
President: John Barker
Hon. Treasurer Chairman/Secretary TT365 Administrator
Simon Fisher Chris Harper Graham Hansen
The President of the League
Members of the Executive Council
Secretaries of Affiliated Clubs
Team Captains
The Annual General Meeting of the League will be held on Thursday, 30th July 2020 at 8.00 p.m. using Zoom. An email will be sent to club secretaries and team captains nearer the date with a link to enable them to join the meeting.
To save time and possible difficulties at that meeting I am providing a summary of the season together with the annual accounts. It will then be open to all to ask questions at the meeting. Any proposals for rule amendments or procedure changes should be emailed to Chris Harper no later than 15th July. If necessary, a vote can be taken on 30th July. Any other business will be conducted in the normal way.
All clubs should be represented but with only one member on Zoom.
Chairman/ Secretary’s report
The League had a truncated season due to the Coved 19 epidemic and matches were suspended in March. At the present time there is no indication from Table Tennis England or the Government when play can resume and indeed there is now mention of a second wave of the virus in autumn/ winter, which may have serious repercussions for our sport.
As the League could not be finished the Executive Committee completed the divisions by applying the average scores when teams had played each other and the final tables are shown on the League’s website.
The final tables did not differ a lot from those at the time of suspension other than in Division 3. A player for South Croydon D played up for the first, second and third teams. Rule 48 is shown below and a majority of the Executive Council decided that his results in Division 3 had to be expunged. An argument was made that if a player does not play up for a particular team more than 4 times it is not a breach. However, the majority view was that matches played for all higher teams had to be taken into account.
48. | A player playing for a team higher to that which they are registered on more than 4 occasions will become a member of the next higher team – except if a breach of rule 47 is obvious then that particular player’s points will not count. |
The Executive Council did not take this action lightly as it denied South Croydon D winning the Division but was satisfied that a breach of the rule had been committed.
The League informed one club in Division 1 that they had cancelled a match without the permission of the Division match secretary and would forfeit the points. This caused no little ‘consternation’ on their part and produced a flurry of emails. Would all teams please note that a match cannot be postponed without the approval of the match secretary or they are likely to forfeit the points.
Congratulations to the winners of the Divisions, Sparta A in Division 1, Eldon B in Division 2, Wickham Park C in Division 3 and South Croydon F in Division 4.
A decision was made to retain TT365 for the 2020/21 season as it will be free and there is no longer a charge of £7 per player.
TT365 has come to an arrangement with Tees Sports, which may mean an increase in advertising on the site but we will keep it under review. It is understood that the Table Tennis England system has improved markedly from when it was first introduced and the Executive Council will also keep that under review.
Surrey TTA had to cancel the Inter League Competition or else we would have entered a team.
The League has not had any indication that Surrey will increase their affiliation fee again but TTE has decided to keep the individual player registration at £16. We voted for Don Parker to be elected deputy chairman of TTE and he received a substantial majority of the vote.
As the two cup competitions have not yet been played to completion the League has delayed purchasing trophies. In the event that those competitions have to be abandoned the League will distribute trophies to clubs in the 4 Divisions.
Needless to say, events caused us not to run an annual tournament.
The League proposes to use the same format of teams playing each other 3 times for next season.
I would like to thank all members of the Executive Council for their sterling work throughout the season, whether as a match secretary, treasurer, or, in Robin’s case, organising and running the two cup competitions and Graham Hansen for being the administrator of TT365.
Finance
The League will keep the team affiliation fee to £40 for the 2020/21 season. Details of where that should be sent will be given once we know the status of next season.
Simon Fisher has produced the accounts, attached. You will see that we have a very healthy balance of £1549.04 at the moment although we have yet to order trophies.
The accounts are self-explanatory thanks to Simon’s meticulous record keeping.
Election of officers
The League would welcome nominations from anyone will to join the Executive Council. The duties are not onerous and the present members are not in the first flush of youth. If some were unable to continue for any reason the League would be placed in real difficulty.
Any Other Business
Any matters will be dealt with at the AGM.
