Free Table Tennis 52
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ARE YOU HAPPY WITH THE ENGLISH TABLE TENNIS ASSOCIATION? |
I must start with an
apology to Val Murdoch in that I made an incorrect statement in the last issue
of FTT. What I wrote was:-
“Now in the latest Electoral Role issued by the ETTA
we see that Mrs Murdoch’s league did not complete the paperwork correctly on
time so have no voting rights.
Furthermore that applies to all the leagues within the county for which
Mrs Murdoch is the National Councillor.”
Our beloved chairman was
quick to respond and point out my error, by stating – “Just to say the below
comment in FTT51 is a false accusation against my wife, as Val is
responsible for North Herts League IM paperwork and has
completed and returned all the documents on time with relevant fees.”
Well Val my sincere
apologies as my informant was not aware of your position with the North Herts
League. However the county that you
represent on the National Council is Bedfordshire and all the leagues in that
county have lost their voting rights.
Fresh from the success of
averting a chairmanship challenge from the former chairman by the means of a
rule change proposal, the ETTA Management Committee members are proposing
further rule change proposals to strengthen their cushy positions of power.
Firstly they are proposing
that the term of Office of the Chairman, Deputy Chairman and Treasurer be
doubled from two years to four years.
Secondly, they are proposing that the term of Office of the Departmental
Vice-Chairmen be increased from one to two years. Thirdly they are proposing an
increase in the number of Departmental Vice-Chairmen.
What will all this change
achieve? Increased security for the
post-holders by way of there being less opportunity to vote them out of office,
while the increased numbers mean that they have greater voting power within the
Council elections.
Add that to the fact that
the little work that they do could then be shared around more people when they
currently pass on so much to the spiralling numbers of staff and then fail to
manage and supervise them competently.
It has been suggested that we will have an “Excuses Department” whose
job will be to provide reasons why everything is being done later with more
errors.
In the
Daily Telegraph on 1st April 2011, Paul Drinkhall states “there is little funding in England to pay for good
practice partners”.
I’m sorry Paul, but more ETTA money must have been
spent upon you than any other England player.
You were a resident of the Nottingham Academy and now the Sheffield
establishment. You have been sent to
more international tournaments and training camps than anybody else – AND you
still moan!
Previous top english international players had to
find and fund their own practice and training partners yet still produced
better international results. So stop
complaining and concentrate your efforts upon improving your European and world
ranking.
TOWARDS A "ONE PARTY STATE?”
Recent events in Tunisia and Egypt do not appear to
have inspired a similar turn of events within our ETTA. Once again there was no
election and the present team was returned unopposed. Nothing wrong with that,
if all had gone well or at least adequately.
The opposite was the case and the ETTA is in the most
awful mess. One notes the mix of high staff numbers and little visible result.
Our national teams are the worst ever in success terms. The arrival in that
activity of Richard Yule to replace the much criticised Steen Hansen has hardly
brought visible improvement. In fact
things are even worse. Despite having a state of the arts training centre which
houses our best players our top man apparently has to go to China to get what
he considers decent practice, we can't run a basic Magazine to publicise our
sport, but we have more staff than ever, I dread to think how large by now,
financed by taxpayers' money.
How long before it all falls to pieces? After the
Olympics Alex Murdoch will have sat in office for ten years and he will have
been challenged only once in this long time.
That, I hear, is not enough. There is a new proposal
that, instead of the current two year term, he will only need to stand for
office every four years and, noting the current climate of lethargy, he may be
unchallenged even then. In short we seem to
be embracing the ideals in that respect of Libya and
Zimbabwe where leaders remain for ever whilst making a general mess of things.
The 4 year proposal will be put to you at the next
AGM or the one after and since hardly anybody turns up at these gatherings it
may be passed with most not noticing what has happened.
For a real choice to exist, there has to be another
candidate and at the moment the only one who has shown any interest is Alan
Ransome and his interest only extended to 2009, i.e. two years ago.
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There is another proposal now that Alan should be
barred on account of his trade interests and that move may well succeed.
There will then, if all the plots succeed, be no
opposition and no elections. If there is another candiate, he will have to wait
four years once all this is brought about.
The free press which once, long ago, consisted of
Table Tennis News no longer exists, shut down by the regime. So it is worse
than that of, say, Italy where Sr. Berlusconi is accused of controlling too
much. Here it has all been shut down after a long period of wasting all our
time.
I fear we are drifting towards dictatorship to which
our lack of interest and care will have greatly contributed.
The ETTA already is quite pointless. We could well do
without it? The local leagues would continue, tournaments would continue. Our
national team could not be worse, if run as it once was, i e by volunteers and
then we had Leach and Bergmann and the Rowe Twins and were a force to be
reckoned with. Now only lethargy holds us together. It alone prevents mass
disaffiliations and it also means that all too often there is no one to vote
for, as everybody has lost hope and indeed interest.
The latter may be of our own making. What we do not
need are new rules which will keep Murdoch and his merry men in office till
deep old age and rules designed to achieve only that.
Make sure that our county and leagues discuss these
matters and ask questions.
John Prean
GRASS-ROOTS
SECTION (PART TWENTY-SEVEN)
When I started playing, the
majority of teams consisted of three players.
On the rare occasions when a player was unavailable then a reserve was
called up from a lower team.
Now teams frequently
consist of tive or six players and there seem more occasions when three are not
available as some of those players are playing in more than one league, so the
captain postpones the match.
With the end of the season
in sight I am facing a massive commitment yet my teams have not postponed a
match this season.
Postponing matches causes
more ill-feeling than can be considered healthy yet some teams have a
reputation for it.
Comments upon previous
reports
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Dear Howard
Thanks you
for all your efforts with Free Table Tennis.
One subject
which has been mentioned from time to time as that of players breaching the
requirements of a good (legal) service. I am a qualified (county)
umpire and have noted that transgressions seem to be endemic in many local
leagues – I play in four. I have been shocked to see ‘dodgy’ serves
ignored by umpires, even in televised international matches at times.
After many
debates on the subject, the committee of my primary league (Folkestone, in
Kent) decided that we would try to do something about the problem. We
therefore wrote a letter to the captains of each of the 42 teams in our league,
the relevant wording of which was as follows:
”We have
noted an increasing number of informal complaints about players consistently
serving ‘illegally’ and being asked “why doesn’t the league do something about
this?”
The
requirement for a legal service is shown in the handbook and the main purpose
is to ensure that the receiver has clear sight of the ball at all times.
This is why it should be thrown up 16cm and must not be hidden from the
receiver.
The full
law is:
·
Service shall start with the ball resting freely on the open palm of the
server's stationary free hand;
·
The server shall then project the ball near vertically upwards, without
imparting spin, so that it rises at least 16cm after leaving the palm of the
free hand and then falls without touching anything before being struck;
·
From the start of service until it is struck, the ball shall be above the level
of the playing surface and behind the server's end line, and it shall not be hidden
from the receiver by the server or his doubles partner or by anything they wear
or carry.
Clearly it
is impossible to have committee members at every match but we suspect the team
captains know which players in their teams are offenders.
The reasons
usually given for ignoring this practice is usually one of the following:
·
“We
are not qualified umpires, only scorers”
·
It
spoils the evening and brings a bad atmosphere
·
The
player gets no advantage
·
The
player can’t serve any other way
These
excuses are not really valid. It does not take a qualified umpire to see
whether the ball is thrown up or hidden from the receiver. It is the
illegal server who spoils the evening and causes a bad atmosphere. Some
players DO get advantage. If they can’t serve another way, they should be
able to learn. The serve is the only time the player has full knowledge
of where the ball is and what they will do.
The umpire
should be satisfied that the ball can be clearly seen by the receiver.
The correct procedure when the umpire believes the service may
have been illegal is, on the first occasion, to call a ‘let’ and explain the
reason to the players. On any subsequent occasion, in the same match, a
fault should be called and a point awarded to the receiver.
Please make
strenuous efforts to ensure you and your players serve within the laws and
spirit of the game.
This letter
has had numerous positive comments from players and, whilst, I am sure the
problem has not been eradicated, players seem more confident to mention
‘problem’ services to opponents without undue embarrassment offence.
Best wishes
Steve
Bispham, Hon Secretary, Folkestone and District Table Tennis Association
Howard comments – thanks Steve and
well done Folkstone. Nice to hear that
positive steps are being undertaken.
Hi Howard,
As always, your newsletter is provocative and interesting to read. There are a couple of points I'd like to make based on personal experience.
Some years ago I was Chairman of an organisation called the Widescreen Association and, in my day to day job, I also owned a company called The Widescreen Centre. Although we sold products that members of the amateur association used the only 'conflict of interests' was in the minds of those few suspicious folk who always dote on conspiracy theories and feel everything has a hidden agenda - usually the very same people who don't think companies should be run on a non-profit basis! The association was my hobby, the Centre was my business - my livelihood - and never the twain did meet.
However, that did not prevent me from promoting the association and keeping it in the limelight in the photographic press. The only thing it did was to allow me to contribute my hard-owned cash for some of the items used for the running of the amateur body....and nobody complained about that (or offered me my money back!).
Given the problems of getting people to volunteer for all committees - something not confined to table tennis - I'd have thought that people with the expertise of Alan Ransome, and similar, who are already dedicated to the sport would be more than welcome. At least they would know what they were doing. And it would certainly be a lot better than being beholden to all sorts of Quango's for monetary grants (more especially as my younger son is working hard, in conjunction with Eric Pickles, to get rid of those totally unelected bodies).
Kindest personal regards
Tony
p.s. A friend of mine holds the ultimate conspiracy theory: he reckons that ex-president Gorbechov was a CIA plant aimed at bringing down the Soviet Union !
Howard comments – thanks Tony. I agree that the expertise of Alan Ransome
in promoting table tennis should not be discounted on the grounds that more
people playing table tennis would result in more people purchasing table tennis
equipment, that would ultimately result in a financial gain. Most county and league committees have
members who are agents for table tennis companies: we know them, we accept them.
What is the difference? – It’s just a matter of scale.
Dear Howard
It seems to me that as far as John Prean is concerned the only decent ETTA
chairman in living memory has been John Prean. Before he became chairman
he spent nearly every issue of Table Tennis News criticising Tom Blunn, and he
has spent most of his life since criticising those who took over from
him. Now he seems to have airbrushed the last election out of
history. He says: 'If again no opponent appears, Alex may yet
continue.' An opponent appeared last time. He was beaten - quite
soundly, as I recall. He goes on to say: 'It may be that
someone will appear, either Alan Ransome or a new figure in which case Alex
would probably be defeated.' Alan Ransome 'appeared' last time. He
did not defeat Alex.
Of course Alex hasn't been perfect. It may well be that a new chairman
will be an improvement. Just as long as it's not John Prean.
Steve Pascall
Howard comments – How far is your living memory,
Steve? I quite liked Ivor Eyles and
Conrad Jaschke but do not recall John criticising them! I admire what John Prean achieved in his
chairmanship as the ETTA went from financial poverty to a healthy financial
position as a result of plenty of national publicity, international matches and
events.
International events virtually disappeared in the
early Murdoch years and have only recently reappeared in the run-up to the
Olympics whereas national publicity is at an all-time low and Table Tennis News
has completely disappeared.
Thanks
for another edition of FTT. I think you should re-brand it – why not “My
Personal Vendetta on Alex Murdoch”.
I
know TTNews had its faults but I’m afraid your own publication has almost
nothing of interest.
Kind
regards, Graham Frankel
Howard comments – Sorry Graham, lots of people are
interested in the state of table tennis and we are trying to promote
change. Maybe the next edition will
have something of interest for you as we are evolving all the time. Maybe we’ll
take the place of TTNews?
My apologies for the delay of this issue but I have
been very busy with a wedding taking place at the end of this month.