Deighton Table Tennis Club saw two of their teams meet each other in two cup semi-finals.
The Deighton Junior F team played the Deighton A team in both the Huddersfield FD Logistics Handicap cup and the Concorde Handicap cup semi-finals – a case of the young pretenders against a very experienced Polish trio.
With all Deighton A players playing off minus scores in the FD Logistics semi-final, they knew it was going to be an uphill battle against the F team, who have improved all season and had a 174-point start in their favour.
After three games Deighton F were leading 159-120, with Cameron Sandhu gaining 35 points from Rafal Aleksandrzak, who was struggling to find any form, Marcus Matthews gaining 8 points from Krzystof Sokiewczik (49-41). Only Tomasz Pietrzyk seemed to be putting up any resistance, however by game six, Deighton F’s youngest player Jonathon Heslop virtually put the game out of reach with an impressive display, beating Aleksandrzak 26-21 & 31-7, gaining a further 29 points. This put the Juniors into a lead of 304-232 with three games to go.
They stretched this to run out comfortable winners 466-349 to reach their first cup final in their first season.
Deighton A had the chance to gain revenge in the Concorde cup semi-final, which featured a change in personnel with the return of Damian Galka to play alongside Aleksnadrzak & Pietrzyk against an unchanged Deighton F.
The Juniors had a 159-point start and it was Pietrzyk v Sandhu in the first game, with a comfortable win for Pietrzyk (11-4, 11-5, 11-5, 11-4) reducing the lead by 26 points
Next was Galka v Matthews and the score of 11-3, 11-7, 9-11, 11-6 saw team ‘A’ reduce the lead further, by a total of 40 points. Next was Aleksandrzak v Heslop, with Heslop gaining 6 points for the ‘F’ team with a scoreline of 8-11, 11-8, 6-11, 10-11.
Galka v Sandhu (11-6, 11-8, 11-9, 11-6) saw the ‘A’ team reduce the score by another 15 points and it was game seven (Galka v Heslop – 1-11, 7-11, 5-11, 8-11, a 23-point gain for the Juniors) that put the game out of reach of Deighton A and ended any chance of defending the cup they had won the previous year.
The final score was 440-380 in favour of Deighton ‘F’, setting up an all Deighton Concorde Cup final against Deighton ‘C’, who knocked out Wilshaw ‘A’ 399-370 in a much closer semi-final which was decided in the last two games.
Paul Simpson
April 17, 2015