'Green' retained despite Ellis heroics

IT WAS an impressively emphatic margin of victory - Guernsey 69, Jersey 41. The home side dominated the Channel Islands team events, just as they had eagerly walked away with 14 of the 18 CI individual titles the previous night.

'What a fantastic result,' beamed Guernsey Table Tennis Association president Derek Webb as he relaxed with a celebratory pint afterwards.

'We lost only two team matches. The two draws meant that we retained those trophies. Three years ago Jersey would have beaten us easily in the junior matches, but now we have walked it.'

Last year, with one fewer match, the Sarnians won the Horace Mallett Memorial Trophy - for overall aggregate score - 63-37. This was another hammering: Horace would have loved it.

'I'm more than happy,' said Webb. 'I'm made up.'

The one slight, and it was slight, disappointment was that a Eugene Ellis-inspired Jersey fought back in the Green Trophy - the senior men's match - to scrape a 5-5 draw.

Guernsey looked in control at 3-1 and then 5-3 up - winning that fifth game guaranteed at least a draw and so the trophy was retained anyway - but the visitors and especially man of the match Ellis dug in and ground out the wins.

Their Caesarean celebration when Ellis grabbed that final point from Phil Ogier spoke volumes: they saw a draw as a win.

Guernsey's trio - Ogier, newly-crowned Channel Islands champion Peter Bretel and new Green Trophy cap Jez Powell - deserved great credit for their efforts at the end of two draining days, but at times did not fire on all cylinders.

'That often happens in the team matches,' said team manager Phil Hunkin.

'You don't always get the same result as the individual matches. In fact, the CI champions usually lose the inter-insulars.'

Ogier and Ellis produced a fine match to end the night.

The 45-year-old Jerseyman has an idiosyncratic style, all fast twitches and grimaces, which should not disguise the fact that he is a fine table tennis player.

Ogier, possibly the best retriever of seemingly lost points in the local game, again pulled out his best shots of the evening against his long-time opponent.

At times Ellis was astonished that Ogier not only reached his attempted kill but returned it to win the point.

However, luck smiled on Ellis: valuable points won with net cords that dropped onto Ogier's side of the table.

Jersey were playing for pride; they knew the Green was out of reach and Ellis provided welcome relief after the Sarnian domination earlier in the day.

The morning session yielded three victories for Guernsey; the under-15s was especially comprehensive as Gary Dodd, Ryan Perry and Bethany Pipet chalked up a 9-1 win.

At lunch, the home side was comfortably ahead in the hunt for the aggregate trophy.

Wins at under-13 open, the women and that under-15 success outweighed Jersey's only two wins of the day, at veteran and under-21 level.

In the afternoon there followed success upon success: under-11 boys, under-18 boys, veterans over-40 and veterans over-60. The under-18 girls' match was drawn, Guernsey retaining the Rosemary Trophy.

Those matches - 34-16 in favour of Guernsey - put the home side 64-36 up and they knew the aggregate was theirs.

And so to the evening's showcase.

'The priority this morning was to come into the Green Trophy with the aggregate trophy in the bag. And we did, comfortably,' said Webb.

Guernsey blooded Jez Powell and he responded in fine fashion. Against Ellis in his first match, he made the Jersey champion work hard and pinched the third game.

Ogier levelled the match score with a straight games defeat of Paul Marshall and Peter Bretel took Guernsey ahead, defeating an admirably sporting Tom Quinn in four.

At a tense moment in the match, Quinn immediately acknowledged that a Bretel shot had nicked the tiniest fraction of the edge of the table and won the point for the Guernseyman.

Powell then got his name on the scoresheet with a defeat of Marshall and Guernsey were storming ahead 3-1.

Then it all went flat.

Bretel lost to Ellis in three tight games in a repeat of the CI men's singles final of the previous evening in which the Guernseyman triumphed.

The doubles was over in no time, too, Guernsey failing to hit any kind of rhythm.

Ogier stopped the slide with a fine win against Quinn and Bretel then held his nerve to secure the Green Trophy with a tough defeat of Marshall, the Guernseyman rediscovering the form that had slipped temporarily earlier in the evening.

Jersey had to win the last two matches to grab a draw and Quinn and then Ellis did so, both in tight contests.