Netts A may have retained their title in the Braintree Table Tennis League but the story of the year could be said to be the continuing rise of Sudbury.
Their A team, Nomads, have risen from second division champions in 2023 to seventh place in division one in 2024, third last season and runners-up this year.
They also won the team knockout cup, breaking the stranglehold of Netts, Rayne and Liberal, who had monopolised it since 2011.
In addition, Wanderers, promoted last year, kept their place in the top division, and Strollers rose from second place in division three to second place in division two. They also added a fourth team, Drifters, this year and are likely to add a fifth next season.
With Netts combining their A and B teams it looked at the start of the season that a title challenge might even be possible but the Earls Colne club husbanded their resources well enough to ensure that the title was not going to slip away from them that easily.
Last year’s A team, Paul Davison, James Hicks and Andy Holmes, played 82 sets between them while the B team’s Szczepan Ziobro and Joe Meleschko both made impressive advances, Ziobro from a 36 per cent average to 70 per cent and Meleschko from 25 to 51. It meant that they ended up with a clear 19-point lead at the top of the table.
The foot of the table featured a close battle for survival between Liberal B (last year’s B and C teams combined), Wanderers and Black Notley B.
Notley B, unexpectedly promoted after finishing third in division two, handled the higher standard well but eventually fell just two points short of safety.
The success of Rayne C in division two was a given almost from the start. A team of Matthew Brown, Dave Marsh, Steve Buer and Paul Wellington did not look likely to give much away and ended with a 24-point winning margin.
Strollers came good after a modest start (33 points from seven matches) once John Colvin and Dave Fiddeman started playing regularly and won nine of their last 11 matches.
At the bottom Notley D may have set a league record, going down despite averaging more than four points a match. League records are patchy before 1970, but it has certainly not happened in the last 56 years.
Division three turned out to be the most interesting of the title races. Finchingfield B looked to be the most likely winners as they won their first seven matches and moved into a seven-point lead.
But Notley E, who had lost to them during that run, gradually picked up the pace and reined them in.
It wasn’t until match 16 that they overtook them, but they ended up with a nine-point lead.
It would undoubtedly have been closer if Lucien Nolan-Bradford, who had an outstanding season in which he lost only once, not missed four of the last five matches.
But Notley’s consistency, in particular Peter Davenport (who won 91 per cent of his sets) and Dave Parker (88 per cent), saw them home.