Above is the match card from Monday 20th Octobers 1st Round Dwyer Cup game between Prestwich A and Wardle Cons A of the 1st and 2nd division respectively

Taken at face value a winning margin of 49 points would suggest a comfortable win but this game was far from that and this result is not a reflection of play

The match started with a difference of just 7 points which was immeadietly clawed back by Prestwich and after 2 matches it look like this match was only going 1 way, to the point where my own team mate – who shall remain anonymous (you know who you are) said the handicaps were stupid and we (Wardle) were going to get battered

Prestwich kept a narrow lead but a good performance from Duncan Hadfield in Game 6, backed up by a good performance in game 7 gave us (Wardle) a 19point lead

When Duncan beat Colin in the 1st set of the 8th game the mood of the evening changed as we moved into a strong position as the match began to slip away from Prestwich and Duncan went on to win well

Going into the 9th game Paul Howarth only needed 6 points from the 4 sets to win the game for Wardle and this was achieved In the 1st set. After that it was really just a case of seeing out the evening’s table tennis and as such Paul made a reasonable points gain and Wardle won the match

As I said at the beginning the result is flattering and would suggest a comfortable night but this would be inaccurate. In this fixture the handicaps were correct and this resulted in a hard fought competitive match. I would hope the handicapping is as accurate for all the fixtures and results in similarly tight matches, Please send in your feedback so that we can get an accurate assessment of what everyone thought about the new format and the handicapping