Differing fortunes for area's battling table tennis sides

At home on Monday night, they had a huge tussle with bottom team Telsports who were greatly strengthened by the presence of Graeme Elrick.

By the time half the matches had been played, Prospects found themselves 1-4 down with Jon Fraser the only St Andrean to score a win.

However, Emily Howat got the recovery underway by defeating Sandy Elrick, followed by a doubles win for Jon and Neil Lea.

Jon drew Prospects back to 4-4 before they slipped behind again and it was left to Neil to secure the draw with a four set victory over Sandy.

On Thursday night Jon and Neil were joined by Dave Goddard in making their longest trip of the season up to Brechin - a tale of second bottom in the division taking on second top.

Carrying an injury picked up in obscure circumstances following the team debriefing after the Telsports match, Dave nevertheless used all his guile to come back dramatically in the first encounter. 

From 2-8 and then 6-10 down in the fifth game, Dave saved five match points to eventually come through 13-11.

Things unravelled after that and only Jon was able to put another score on the card as the high-flying Brechin team sent Prospects homewards with a 2-8 defeat.

In Division Two, it was also a case of a St Andrews team taking on table toppers in the shape of Telstars.

Perhaps relaxing with few expectations on the evening, Swots made their opponents work hard, with only two of the ten matches being decided in straight sets.

Emma Bissett scored an excellent win against Jim Houghton and was unlucky to be pipped 10-12 in the fifth by David Monteith but she had some consolation when, partnering Dave Beveridge, the Swots pair inflicted the first doubles defeat of the season on David and Ian Farquhar.

With neither Prefects nor Truants having fixtures, New Kids were our only other team playing this week and they made the challenging trip to take on bottom of the table Kingsway.

Ken Falconer, Kong Wan and Ian Smith all found good form in scoring a valuable 7-3 victory which, for now, pulls them out of the relegation places in Division Two.

The bottom of the table currently reads:

New Kids - played 13, points won 43.

Swots - played 14, points won  41.

Kingsway - played 14, points won  38.

With the fixtures amongst these three having been completed, relegation will be avoided by the team which can glean most points in the remaining fixtures against the higher placed teams.