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The contest for this season's Braintree Table Tennis League title was one of the tightest for years and culminated in the do-or-die atmosphere of the penultimate match.

Champions Cressing and the previous year's winners Black Notley A were only three points apart when they met with one match to go and it was Notley's 6-4 win in that encounter that sealed the title.

But it was the first two matches of the season that made the difference.

Cressing were without Peter Hayden, the reigning men's singles champion, for those two matches and suffered a surprise 7-3 defeat in the first to Notley B, then could only beat bottom team Rayne B by the same score in the second.

In their three subsequent meetings with Notley B, they won 8-2, 7-3 and 8-2 while they beat Rayne B 9-1 on all three later occasions.

If they had matched those scores in the first two matches, they would have been virtually home and dry by the time it came to the final clash with Notley A.

But Notley also have a claim to the high ground as they won two and drew one of the meetings between the two teams.

They only suffered when Cressing turned out a team of Peter and Ian Hayden and Rik James.

Notley were only able to turn out a recognised first team - three out of Steve Kerns, Gary Young, Ian Brown and Ken Lewis - on one of those occasions.

And that was after Brown had had to make a late dash to the game when Kerns was held up in London.

It was a third title for Notley, following successes in 2000 and 2006 and second place last year.

There was an equally interesting though unrewarded fight for third place, eventually won by Notley B who used a total of 12 players to get there.

Andrew McEwan played in all their matches, Andy Dosher in more than half, Laurie Sapiano seven, Brad Hudgell five, Greg Green four and various other people one or two here and there.

Their matches with the other two contenders for third place indicate how close it was.

They fought out three draws with Bocking and won the other match 6-4 while they had one draw with Rayne A and two 6-4 wins, only stretching to 8-2 in their final encounter when Rayne were a player short.

The Bocking v Rayne matches were also close: one draw, 7-3 and 6-4 to Rayne and 7-3 to Bocking.

Not so close were the matches featuring the bottom team Rayne B.

They occupy yo-yo land between the top two divisions, a distinction they share with Liberal A.

They won division two comfortably last year and were just as comfortably bottom of division one this year.

Liberal A have done exactly the opposite, coming back up this year after failing to win any games in the top division last season.

But Rayne B did have the distinction of avoiding a 10-0 defeat, a scoreline that, apart from one concession, was completely absent in the top division this year, a rare statistic.

Somehow they managed always to sneak at least one win and lost an amazing 12 matches by 9-1.

Paul Mitchell, Brian Riedling, Peter Hance and Brian Cook all had the distinction of being the one to prevent the blank sheet and on three occasions they were saved by their doubles pairing.

They have the satisfaction or otherwise of knowing that if the league remains in its current format, they will almost certainly come back up again next year.

And go down again the year after.

7:07am Wednesday 7th May 2008

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