The other new club is Grubba Fans who are mainly Polish players who have their home venue at the Polish Circle Club in Cheetham Hill. They have entered two new teams; one in division 2 and the other in division 5. The division two team face Wardle Conservative Club A who were relegated from the top division last season so that should be a close encounter. Their ‘B’ team play a new team entered by Ramsbottom Town which includes some junior players from Ramsbottom Table Tennis Academy.
The big talking point this season will be the introduction of a new individual handicap system closely based on the one operated by the Oldham League. In recent years, and in particularly last year, there has been criticism of the ‘team handicaps’ for this competition with a number of people expressing 2 common views. Firstly that the team handicaps made the assumption that all team mates were equal ability and thus made the handicaps flawed. Secondly, it was also the view of higher placed sides that if the lower players were quite good then the handicaps would be too much to make up and a number of lower rank sides felt that the handicaps were not harsh enough against the top sides
The individual handicap is calculated on the player’s number of wins and therefore takes account of the individuals playing ability which is reflected in the handicapping. Five new competitions have named as follows; Division 1 will be the Macdonald Cup. Division 2 will be the Poytress Cup. Division 3 is the Ellis Pressman Cup. Division 4 is the Sam Hilton Cup and finally division 5 is the George Lomax Cup. Sam Hilton and Ellis Pressman were long time players in the League who passed away recently and George Lomax had a long association with the League being Club Secretary for ELPM and President of the League for 10 years until his death last year.
The Dwyer Cup is a handicap competition across all 5 divisions so there may be need for some ‘tweaking’ of the handicaps once the results are in. For all clubs that are knocked out of the Dwyer Cup in the 1st round we have introduced the Sponsors Cup which will be played in the same format as the Dwyer Cup.
Another big change for this season is the return to Castle Leisure Centre for the Bury Closed Championships. Rising costs and dwindling entries to the championships caused the move from Castle but the Committee of the League are making every effort to make the championship different to attract entries. Staggered starting times to reduce waiting times, individual handicap competition and a round robin format to ensure players have plenty of matches. All clubs and players will be asked to support the championship and full details of how to enter will be on our new, revamped website http://www.burytabletennis.org.uk
