Cadet girls win Six Nations team bronze

GUERNSEY'S cadet girls duo of Alice Loveridge and Paula Le Ber grabbed a team bronze at the Six Nations tournament in Largs, Scotland. And it could have been silver.

Le Ber had two match points to beat Northern Ireland, but could not convert them and the Sarnians finished behind the English and the Irish.

Nevertheless, they still finished ahead of Wales, Scotland and Isle of Man and GTTA president Derek Webb was encouraged that Guernsey placed fourth of the six in all but one of the other categories.

'We're competing now and it's fantastic. It was a tremendous weekend for everybody,' he said.

Webb said he was particularly impressed by the play of Scott Romeril in the under-18s.

'He probably had the best weekend he's ever had although he didn't get the results he deserved.'

Guernsey's other pairings were Romeril and Garry Dodd (under-18s), Bethany Pipet and Sophie Dyer (under-18s) and Adam and Olly Langlois (under-15s).

Romeril, Loveridge and Le Ber all reached the quarter-finals of their respective singles event.

Meanwhile there was another big entry for the fourth in the series of the Deutsche Bank Junior Development Banded tournaments.

More than 80 took part.

'The banding system is proving popular and it is designed to give everyone a chance of becoming a winner at some stage,' said the GTTA's media co-ordinator, Phil Hunkin.

'Contestants who win two tournaments in succession automatically move up to the next band.

'Players are able to enter their band and the one above as well as the open.

'Evidence of the success of this system is that this tournament produced four new winners in bands three, four, five and six.'

The standard is particularly high, with some juniors now among the best players in the island and this was demonstrated in the band-one final which was contested by two 11-year-olds.

Liam Robilliard and Alice Loveridge had seen off their rivals, Ollie Langlois and Mathew Stubbington, on the way to the final and earlier in the day Robilliard had beaten Loveridge in the group stages.

But the result was reversed in the final, with the girl protege adding yet another trophy to her expanding cabinet, winning by three games to one.

Robilliard was soon compensated by his victory in the band two final where he had a convincing 3-0 win over Paula Le Ber to record his second of the season at that level.

Band three saw Thomas Ruff beat Lawrence Stacey 3-2, the latter coming through a tough semi-final against his twin brother Joshua.

In band four there was a surprise win for Joshua Butler over Joshua Stacey, the former winning 3-1 after some very long rallies.

Band five also produced a surprise with victory for Jack Travis who beat James Lihou in the fifth set a couple of months after losing to the latter in the December tournament.

In Band six Sam Clark finally took the honours after three times reaching the final only to lose it.

On this occasion he beat Fareed Anees, who was playing in his very first table tennis tournament, 3-0.