My Sporting Life
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HOMEMy Family 2006 Open Golf Championship - Royal Liverpool Golf Club - Laura and I went to the first practice day and took some photo's for the album - here are some of them, mostly taken by Laura, which I think are superb in many respects - especially the bunker shots which she captures brilliantly with my new camera - she's a novice, but how well she took them.
Click this link for the Widnes Rec B Team - our table tennis team page from Jim O' Grady's Web site.
April 2011
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Cutting to the chase, my sport has always been Table Tennis - so this might tend to put some of you off!! HOWEVER - I have always been a reasonable "ball player" (good hand/eye co-ordination brought on by playing footy as a goalkeeper on the Bongs as a lad) and partook of many other ball sports over the years. Football (as a younger lad); squash, cricket, tennis (the big racket one on a BIG green patch!), golf (which I think I should have been good at if I'd stuck at it) and badminton (I know, it isn't a ball - but it still has a racket.........). So most of my memorable sporting moments revolve around my chosen sport (NO it isn't called Ping Pong any longer - except in Germany I think?) exept for a memorable 9 holes of golf at Royal Liverpool. Table tennis originated in England at the end of the 19th Century as an upper class pastime before slowly spreading around the globe to become the world's largest participation sport.The first records of the game come from the early 1880s, when British army officers in India and South Africa used lids from cigar boxes as paddles and rounded corks from wine bottles as balls. It soon found its way back to England where James Gibb, the founder of the English game, had returned from the United States with some hollow celluloid balls, began playing indoor tennis at the turn of the century. The new game adopted a variety of names before "ping pong" - after the sound of the paddle hitting the ball - took hold. James Gibb, a long distance runner and founder of the James Gibb and Co. Engineering Firm in the early 19th century is said to have given the name to Jack Jaques who then patented and sold the idea as 'ping-pong'. The game was originally played as a parlour game, often called 'Whiff Whaff' using vellum rackets like drums with handles one foot long. The Ping Pong Association was founded in 1902 but the game was never taken seriously and seemed destined for national death. Attempts to revolutionise the game by changing its techniques were discouraged by some of its founders. Difficulty also arose because the name 'ping-pong' was a registered trade name and thus the control of the game was in the hand of manufacturers of equipment. In 1925 more progressive officials realised that the name 'ping-pong' was a handicap which the game would never live down. Thus, the English Table Tennis Association (ETTA) was founded and the Ping Pong Association faded away. By 1956, ETTA, sole arbitrators of Table Tennis in England had 260 leagues, 8000 clubs and 200 000 affiliated players and had taken the lead in world table tennis, embracing over 50 affiliated countries. This encouraged both European and World Table Tennis competition English sporting goods manufacturers J. Jaques & Son Ltd registered the name in 1901, the year before E.C. Goode made the significant advance of covering his bat in rubber to impart spin on the ball. It was not until 1921 that a Table Tennis Association was founded in England, and the International Table Tennis Federation followed in 1926. London hosted the first world championship in 1927 and the early years of competitive table tennis were dominated by central European countries. Hungary's Maria Mednyanszky and Viktor Barna were the stars, with seven women's and five men's titles respectively. A revolution in the sport took place in the 1950s as Asian players began a dominance that continues to this day. Japan's Horoi Satoh introduced a new foam rubber paddle in 1952 allowing even more spin on the ball and Asian players also developed the "penholder" grip, with the paddle held between forefinger and thumb. While Japan was the most powerful nation in the 1950s and 1960s, other countries such as Hungary and Sweden kept up the challenge while Chinese players arrived on the scene. Table tennis also made its mark on a far larger stage in 1971 when the term "ping-pong diplomacy" was coined. The USA team was playing in the world championships in Japan when they received a surprise invitation from the Chinese team to visit the People's Republic. On 10 April, nine players, four officials, and two spouses stepped across a bridge from Hong Kong to the Chinese mainland, becoming the first group of Americans allowed into China since the communist takeover in 1949. With an estimated 40 million players worldwide it was no surprise when table tennis became an Olympic sport in 1988, with China and South Korea dominating in Seoul. China continues to lead the way with a total of 26 Olympic medals from four Games and are sure to be the nation to beat in Athens - but then I'm not playing for England !! My playing career started after I left school and started work at Bowmans Chemicals in 1961. The lunchtime sporting activities of the factory consisted of Table Tennis (in the Canteen dining room), Snooker (in the Snug), Darts and Dominoes in the lounge and during good weather there was always the football and cricket out on the fields (for the guys) and Rounders (for the girls). I think I took to the game naturally and picked it up very quickly, playing against some good "works" players (Bowmans, Moss Bank Works that is...) in Fred Merrill, Ronnie Thornett, Tommy Purcell (Jnr), Jack Daintith, John Bibby, Peter Quinn, Bob Williams, Rodney Turton, Brian Gilmore and Billy Ogburn to name but a few of my earlier opponents and teachers of the "old game played with Barna bats". I then started to play in the local Widnes and Runcorn (now the Halton TT League) league at the Vine Rec Club (the Orrs Zinc White Chemical company's recreation club in Coroners Lane) in the 1962/3 season (I think) in the Third Division. I played with Mike Gibb and Rodney and a number of other players and found I enjoyed the competitive element of the league games and fairly quickly was winning most of my games in the division. I quickly changed to the "sandwich rubber" bat from the Barna and found my game improved. (At one time I was the proud owner of a "square bladed" green rubber Chester Barnes bat and not many people played with them!!) Anyway, you will not doubt all recall where you where when John F Kennedy was shot............. well I was playing table tennis at the Vine when I went to watch TV in the lounge during the game. The programme was interrupted for a "Newsflash" and the news came through about the events in Dallas that sunny afternoon. After 2 seasons at the Vine, and being tipped as the upcoming young star of the future for the Vine Club, I moved to form a team at Bowmans (Moss Bank) with some of the many good players who knocked up at lunchtimes in the canteen. Peter Quinn, Fred Merrill and Billy Ogburn (a great junior player who "retired" early from playing competitive games and made his comeback for the Bowmans Team). On our first season in the 3rd Division of the league, we won the Division and on receiving the trophy on Finals Night discovered that we had won the "Bowman Trophy" !! It transpired that Bowmans had entered a team in the league 10 years earlier and Mr Pert (our MD) had donated the trophy for the 3rd Division champions - which Bowmans won in their first season - what a coincidence that was........ In several seasons at Bowmans works we eventually ended up with four teams playing in the league and one of these was an all ladies team(a rare thing in the league game at the time) made up of secretaries from the office, and only to be repeated some years later at St Michaels Club when Irene and some other females formed an all ladies team in the 5th Division. Over several years we played our way to the top division with a variety of different players joining our teams. We moved from club to club over the years, wherever we were welcomed and a table was available. After a few years in the top division, we were usually in the top three teams and were a team to beat - but we never managed to win the top trophy, Division One Champions.......Weston Club and the Holland boys came along and made sure we never won it as they proceeded to run away with it every season for many years - nobody could beat them...............but we got close on a few occasions. I remember well the few occasions when our third player did not turn up for us and Billy Ogburn and I would give away the three games to the opposition and then beat them 7-3 by winning all our games..... The local newspaper reports for the league (written at the time by the inimitable Kevin Higgins) read "Dynamic Duo strike again" - Oh the good old days......... From these beginnings I finally reached my pinnacle by representing Widnes B team in the inter-town league and Billy and I played ourselves into the final of the Mens Doubles championship were we lost to the Barna specialists and classy doubles players Bryning and Hughes. The semi final was probably our best ever game game of doubles when we played out of our skins to beat the seeded pair of Sam Holland and John Kenwright - I wish I could have watched the game as it was quite a match watched by the whole hall and applauded by them - I was concentrating so hard I can't remember how well we played many of the points. SO that was how I got into the game and have played it since at many clubs in Widnes and with some great characters. I am now entering my 50th year of competitive playing and am eligible to play in the Over 60's Championship competition and after several good finishes in the Halton League in recent years we are now on the verge of winning the 2nd Division title depending on one final result to be played soon.......... We are second favourites but you never know !!!! More later.................. GOLF - the ruination of a good walk or the most addictive game on the planet? The other sports I have taken part in over the years from boyhood include Cricket, Soccer (mostly as goalkeeper - wonder where Kevin got his footballing position from?), Tennis, Squash, Badminton and Bowls (on a few occasions) as well as my second favourite sport - GOLF......... It all started at Newquay in Cornwall in 1965 (I think) when I went on holiday there and we were joined by a young professional local golfer, Alan Thompson, who had just played in a competiton and came down for a holiday. He took myself and his brother in law to Fistral Beach Golf Club for a knock around the course and I thought I might enjoy the game as it was a challenge to hit the ball even..... Working at Bowmans at the time some of the Lab workers started to play early morning golf at Allerton Golf Club in Liverpool and I tagged along and started to play regularly. As with all the sports I have played I am self taught and so was never going to be a world beater but I stuck at the golf over the years and became fairly proficient where I could go round Allerton in the low to middle 80's eventually. Croda competitions at work then took me further afield to more difficult courses arounfd Lancashire and showed me that the game will never be easy but can be enjoyable - the most exotic course I played was Golf del Sur in Tenerife while on holiday there with the Jackson family (Lyn and Vin - both of whom eventually became Club Captains at Widnes). So I invested in clubs and golf gear over the years and played in any invitational corporate event I could through work and enjoyed some wonderful days out, some great company and some good and not so good golfing moments on some wonderful courses. While on holiday in Normandy, France, we were on a campsite attached to a lovely course called Golf des Ormes and they had a clinic with professionals which I decided to book on to try to cure my sometimes horrendous slice of the tee...... So we went along and little Laura decided to have a go herself while there and had a basket of balls to hit on the driving range. She struggled a bit as she is left handed and they only had right handed adult clubs. On returning home and some time later she asked if she could try my clubs in the back garden and started hitting plastic practice balls down the garden. A little later Irene came home and said that a golf Pro was holding lessons for children in Kingsway Leisure Centre and would Laura like to try it - which she did.......... and that was the start of her becoming a very proficient golfer getting down to 6 handicap, playing for Lancashire Girls as a junior and getting a trial place for the English Girls squad at one stage - to be continued
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