Welcome to the SDTTL 78th Season
- Details
WELCOME TO THE NEW SEASON CHAIRMAN’S REPORT
Welcome to the 2025/26 season of the Sutton and District Table Tennis League.The committee has been fairly stable, and an excellent job has been done getting everything together for the coming season, which I’m extremely grateful for. Des Coke has unfortunately stepped down from his position as secretary and we have Kalin Dimitrov who has stepped up to fulfil that role. Many thanks to Des, and I look forward to working with Kalin.
Last season we moved to three divisions which brought much tighter competition, and we will be continuing with this format. We have a couple of new division 3 teams and unfortunately have lost our division 2 winners Eldon B, so there will be 7, 7, and 8 teams across the divisions. We will be starting once again in mid-September and following feedback from the teams we are bringing the cup semi-finalsearlier, which with Easter at the beginning of April, will mean the league will finish slightly later. We also have two rule changes. The first being a reduction in the playing percentage to qualify for the cup semi final and final, from 30% to 20%. The second giving the committee the final say on points awarded for conceded games, rather than the previous 10 being awarded by default. Exact wording appears later in the handbook.
For the season just gone, we had a new entry from York Gardens who put out a very strong team who ended up winning division 1 and the knockout cup. They were pushed hard by Crusaders A in the league, and it is great seeing such a high standard. That team will be continuing as St Paul’s following a change of home venue. Ballards A were the winners of the handicap cup after finishing runners up last season, and at the closed championships there were lots of tight matches, and hopefully a few more people will take part in the tournament this year. Congratulations to all our winners and many thanks to our new Trophies Officer Tom Coady who got everything ready for the presentations at the AGM.
I wish all the teams an enjoyable season and with Steve Parris and Steve Sharp as divisional and cup secretaries I have no doubt things will run smoothly.
Lewis Vidler
SDTTL Chair
Cover Photo - Andrew Jackson; Photo courtesy of Michael Loveder.