Season 5 – The Band Splits

So, of course, if at this point you haven’t read the four previous posts in this series, I would strongly advise you to. My fifth season in local league table tennis was my most difficult. It was so tricky, that I could have easily given up at the end of it. I’m so glad I didn’t!

As I mentioned at the end of the last post, my best friend had flown the nest and moved on to a better team. He was in the league above me at this point and it was very hard for me. I had played with him from the very beginning, but I wanted him to do well. That was until I played against him, but more on that later!

Following my captaincy in the previous season, I was again appointed captain but I had a completely different team. At the start of the season, my team was down as being me, a guy from the club who I knew was decent but didn’t win many games and our club’s main coach was I was thrilled to have on the team.

However, our coach had been quite unwell so he said he didn’t think he would be able to play at all. As well as this, the other player was having an operation on his wrist so said he couldn’t play for the first few games. I was completely stuck.

I knew I could call up players from teams below, but what if our games clashed? I would be the only player on the team!

I had to act fast because it was close to the start of the season. As a long shot, I asked a friend from school who I had known for many years if he would be interested in playing. I had played with him a number of times at our local church and I knew he would hold his own if he played in the league. He was an awkward left-handed player who was very unpredictable.

I was confident his style would cause some problems in the bottom division of the league, but obviously playing local league table tennis is a commitment, so I knew there would be no guarantees.

Amazingly, he agreed to play! It was such a relief to know I had a team to start the season. In the first few games, I had to call people up from the team below us to play while our third player recovered from his operation. He actually recovered sooner than expected, so we were only without him for the first two games.

I wasn’t really too concerned about results, I was happy to just have a full team playing, knowing how close we were to not having a team. The league was a bit different that season because it was only six teams.

We came third which wasn’t too bad really. We did finish below the team below us from our club which was a bit annoying, but looking back at the table, we we way behind them and way ahead of fourth place, so not too bad.

Personally, my results improved again from the season before, going up from 46% to 75%, winning 34 out of 45 matches. To date, this is still my best season in terms of number of games won (spoiler!), so I was very pleased with how I played that year.

My teammates also played well. The more experienced player had his best season, winning 43% of his games. And my friend did very well in his first season, winning 40% of his games. His style really did catch some people out and he was a very effective player. Our doubles was also very good that year.

I played every doubles game with the more experienced player. You’d think playing with the left-hander would be better, but he really didn’t enjoy doubles! We only lost a few matches in doubles during the season which really gave us confidence going into every match.

The highlight of the season though, was during a Handicap Cup game. Now I have spoken about Handicap tournaments before, so if you haven’t read it, here’s the link: https://thelocalleaguetabletennisplayer.com/2021/02/12/handicap-mayhem/.

This Handicap game was interesting because it was against the team that my best friend was playing for. We played together at every practice night, so we knew each other’s game inside out. He would beat me nine times out of ten if we ever played a match at training, but I knew this was different.

I got thrashed by his teammates, probably because I was too busy thinking about the most important match of the evening. Being a Handicap game, I knew I only needed to win a certain number of points to beat him. But somehow, I beat him outright. Despite this meaning I won a lot of points for my team, it wasn’t enough to win the match, but I got the bragging rights!

My friend didn’t take the loss well. We were in our mid-teens at this point so, he was quite annoyed! His teammates could clearly see the funny side as they were making fun of his reaction. But we can look back fondly on that match now we’ve both matured (slightly!).

Despite the rocky start, it was a really good year. As with every off-season, I wanted to improve even more. But, I knew that the next season would be my last, before I would leave the area to go to university.

Season 4 – A Champions League Place?

In the continuing series about my seasons in local league table tennis, we find ourselves at one of the most important in my short career. My fourth season was really good but at the end of it, there was a cost to our team. But that will come later!

Now the start of this season was very exciting because I was appointed captain! This was because my friend really didn’t enjoy being the captain the season before, so I was given the responsibility. My friend was happy not being captain because it meant he could focus more on his game.

There was no situation of me going up to him and like in Captain Phillips saying “I am the captain now”!

Anyway, I also had a really good team to pick from. It was still my friend and me from the last season, but we had two new players in the team for me to pick from. One was a left hander with a strong forehand and the other was almost the same, but right handed. The second new player was also a tennis player and I could see that in his game.

We also must have been the tallest team in the league because we were all easily over six foot.

Being captain was fun, but it did have its challenges. I was able to rotate the team fairly well with my friend (our best player) playing the most games, with the other three swapping in and out each week. I do remember a couple of funny occasions where I struggled to get a team.

On one occasion was ill off school at short notice, so I needed to quickly contact the left-hander to see if he could step in for me. I knew he worked at WH Smiths in the town centre, so I got my mum to ring the shop to pass the message on to him! I think it worked because he was able to play in the match.

Another time I was on holiday in France and one of team said they were ill so couldn’t play. Using a French cafe’s wifi, I had to email round to see if anyone else could. But I couldn’t get anyone so we had to just have two players in that match.

Overall, the team performed very well that season. Despite being the worst player on the team, my results continued to improve. After getting 38% the season before, I went up to 46%, winning 14 out of 30 games. Our two new players were very good. The left-hander got 54% with the tennis player getting an awesome 75%.

But the star of our team was my friend and former captain who got an incredible 83%, losing just seven matches during the season.

Our team managed to finish right in the middle of the division. Fourth out of eight teams. Again, this was an improvement on the season before with us winning eight matches and losing just three. The league was actually very close that year as we were only seven points behind the team who finished first.

This was great and showed us that with more experience and having better players on our team, we could quickly improve.

However, at the end of the season there was some bad news. My friend had done so well that he was being moved up a team which was clearly great for him, but it meant we wouldn’t be in the same team for the first time.

This was tough, but it was nothing compared to how tumultuous the beginning of my next season turned out to be.

Anger and Rage!

One aspect of playing local league table tennis that has always amused and confused me at times is the fact that some players take it unbelievably seriously!

If you’re an Olympic athlete, representing your country in a World Championships or in a high pressure match where you could win a lot of money, I’d understand some red mist, but not if your playing in a local league in a village hall on a Tuesday night!

Of course, it’s natural to not want to lose. But there is a limit, especially when playing in small venues and usually with children around. It’s also natural to get frustrated when we don’t play quite as well as we know we can.

In the leagues I have played in, there have been some players who were known for losing their temper during matches. One in particular would lose it if someone didn’t throw the ball up quite enough or get lots of edge or net shots. In international table tennis, player do get called out for not throwing the ball up enough when serving, but in local league I find that quite excessive.

This particular player would intentionally do foul serves and give points away if things upset him, which isn’t really in the spirit of local league table tennis. This player would remind my friend and I of John Goodman’s character in The Big Lebowski when they’re bowling! Look that up on YouTube if you’re unfamiliar!

Another infamous player in the first league I played in would have similar bursts of rage, but he alomst took it one step further on one occasion. He was coaching a group of young players in a match and was unhappy at one of his opponents who wasn’t tossing the ball up quite as much as he would have liked.

He threatened to quit the match but his young team wanted to play. He then squared up with one of the opponents in what looked like a fight waiting to happen, but fortunately it didn’t and the match continued.

The same player once threw his bat at someone he lost to. If his opponents hadn’t ducked, it could have caused some serious damage!

Some damage was actually cause to the village hall I played in once because of some table tennis rage. I wasn’t there to see what happened, but one day there was a big hole in the wall. The player who did it was very sorry and paid for the damge to be repaired!

In the most recent league I played in, people were generally a bit calmer, although there were a couple of amusing incidents.

One was in a handicap cup game I was watching where one of the players kept getting lucky edge and net shots much to the increasing frustration of her opponent. At the end of the game, he refused to shake her hand which I thought was very unsporting. Especially because net and edge shots are never intentional.

Another incident took place at a tournament where a player who has played a lot in county matches and national events was there and playing in a semi-final. It was clear this player had a high opinion of himself and when he lost he grabbed his kit and left without saying anything to anyone. I really don’t like this attitude. It was almost like he thought he was too good for that tournament so when he lost he just went off in a huff.

I’m sure there have been many more incidents like this in other leagues and it’s unfortunate that some people can’t keep their emotions in check, especially in amateur sport.

Anyway, as I always say, the most important thing in local league table tennis is to have fun and enjoy the matches you play. And remember, nets and edges are never intentional!

Season 3 – The Only Way is Up!

Sorry it’s been a few weeks since I last posted. I thought it would be good to continue the series looking at each season for local league table tennis I have played, picking up at season three!

Now after the shambolic showings in my first two seasons, I was determined I was going to get better. I had to. I couldn’t get much worse!

Around this time, I was starting to grow a bit more as well and get stronger. I was in my teens by this point, so things were changing.

This time, I was moved back up to play in the ‘H’ team, so I must have done something right in the off season. The problem was we were essentially a two-man team. Our regular third player was quite unreliable. He would often forget when games were on and not turn up! And when he did, he didn’t win many!

So it was mainly my best mate and me who were in the same team for a third year in a row. However, this time something was different. He was the captain!

He was the best player on our team, but he didn’t enjoy being captain. I could tell it weighed heavy on him, so at the end of the season he was pleased to step down.

Looking back at the league tables and the player averages that season, our results had massively improved on the previous seasons. After winning a total of seven matches across my first two seasons in local league table tennis, I won 21 in the third with an average of 38%.

That may not sound great, but it was a huge improvement. This may have been because I was more experienced or because more new players were joining the league. It was a good feeling to actully win sometimes! Our captain was awesome that year. He won 50% of his games which was the main reason we didn’t lose quite as many as before.

We finished with five wins as a team that year, coming 6th out of eight teams. Again, that may not sound great but we were essentially a two-man team who were still young in our local league table tennis careers.

Something was clearly starting to click for us and we were really enjoying it. Because my best mate was in my team, at school, all we would talk about were our league matches and who we were playing next and what tactics we could use. It was great!

At the end of the season, we were so excited to continue improving. But that would have a cost…

Eleven Table Tennis VR – Full Review

Now before you read this, make sure you have read my first impressions post I did when I first got Eleven Table Tennis VR. Find it here: https://thelocalleaguetabletennisplayer.com/2021/04/30/table-tennis-in-vr-first-impressions/.

So now you’ve read this, we can get stuck into business. First, I can say that by far and away Eleven is the best table tennis video game I have ever played. That being said, their aren’t many like it. I played an old table tennis game by Rockstar Games on the Xbox. That was good, but I found the only way to beat the higher difficulties was to defend, so it was boring.

Then the various Wii attempts at table tennis with games like Wii Sport Resort and the Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games which are good, but can never match the immersive VR experience.

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In the above pictures are my Oculus Quest 2 in its case. Eleven is the only game I have really played much. I have Beatsaber as well, but I normally just go on that to warm up for Eleven!

As well as playing against people online, Eleven has a lot of mini-games which are good for honing your skills. For example, you can play against the computer on a number of different difficulties. I found playing the computer hard, because usually when I play against a human, they miss quite often. The computer never misses, or hits the net.

The only way to win points is to hit winners which is a good test of your shots. Beating the easy difficulty is very easy, but I had a few problems with the medium. It took me about two or three goes to finally win. I once had a go against the hardest difficulty, but didn’t win a single point!

As well as this, there are a few other mini-games which provide something a bit different. There is a really good practice area where you can set a robot up to feed you various shots to hit. You can have it do a top or back spin serve as well as forehand smashes, which I have to practice a lot!

There is also a serve practice area as well as quadrant drills and even beer pong!

Anyway, the main event of the game is online play, which is fantastic. The more I have played the game, the more I have found out how big the online community is. I thought VR was quite a rare form of gaming, but loads of people play Eleven!

After I first played, I turned my mic off so I could get a few wins under my belt. However, when I tried to turn it back on it wouldn’t work. But after a recent update, it works again so it is quite inconsistent. I have had some awesome matches. The levels do vary quite a lot. I have thrashed some people, with some of them rage quitting part way through the match!

I have had really close matches with others, and some have just outplayed me. The thing I struggle most with in the game is movement. I find it hard to move around knowing there is a small coffee table behind me that I might fall over at any moment! So defending against lots of top spin is hard.

Also, my serves don’t have as much bite as in real life. At ‘real’ table tennis, I like to put as much side or back spin on the ball as I can, but I can’t seem to do that in VR. So I’m limited to short or long serves, either on the left, right or in the middle of the table. That is enough to beat some players, but most return them with ease.

After playing for a few weeks, I discovered just how large the online community is surrounding the game. I have joined a really active Facebook group where people actually organise tournaments. I haven’t played in one yet, but I’m sure I will as they are always going on!

There is also a website which keeps a detailed breakdown of all the matches I have played as well as my online rankings. Unlike most players I have come across, I have won more matches than I have lost. However, I have only played a total of 27 matches with most players way in the thousands!

I have won 17 matches and lost 10, which I’m quite happy with. Also, every player has what is called an ELO. I’m still not sure what that stands for, but basically it means it’s easy to find players of a similar standard as you. Everyone starts with an ELO of 1500, and it moves up and down when you win and lose.

Mine is currently 1617, so I have moved up fairly well so far. I have played one player ranked over 1700 and he thrashed me so I know I still have a lot of work to do.

Anyway, with ‘real’ table tennis’ not really going on at the moment, I will probably write about the Eleven tournaments I play in more than real ones for the foreseeable future.

If you have the means, I would highly recommend this game. It’s so realistic that I’m sure my ‘real’ game would have improved as a result of it!

The Eccentricity of Local League Table Tennis Players

Something interesting I’ve noticed in my time as a local league table tennis player is how some players create their own ways of playing.

Clearly, they have never had coaching, but they use shots, serves or even ways of holding the bat which are unique to them. This is always fun to play against because it really keeps you on your toes as they can often be unpredictable.

A lot of players at local league level do have some natural quirks because only professional players have every shot, serve and movement perfectly coached. This includes me, because over the years people have commented about my backhand. It is my best shot and wins me a lot of points, but it looks a bit odd. This is because I tend to use my whole arm in the shot instead of flicking my wrist.

Therefore when I demonstrate the shot without a bat in my hand, it just looks like I’m trying to do some kind of 70s disco dance move!

In the most recent season I played in, I can think of two players from the same team that had very distinctive styles. One of them, I was told, was a decent badminton player. This was clear from the way he moved around the table tennis table and the way he hit the ball. He was a very defensive player who tended to push most balls back. However, some times he would let a ball drop very low until it was almost touching the floor and then try and loop it back.

He was fairly consistent, but sometimes he’d let the ball drop too low and miss it completely. When he chose to attack, which was rare, it almost caught me by surprise and his smash was savage. If he used it more often, he would be a much better player. But such is the eccentricity of local league table tennis players.

The other player, from the same team, had a very unusual way of holding the bat. Not only that, but he would play in a sleeveless top in cargo short and wearing a cap. I thought the cap was to keep his hair out of the way until he took it off and I saw he was bald!

I’m not sure if the grip he used had an official name, but essentially the way he held the bat meant there was no need for a handle. He used his hold hand to grip the bat around the paddle end and would thrust his arm out to hit the ball. It looked very awkward, bit it seemed to work for him.

I played him once in a cup match which was a dead rubber as my team had already won before the match. So I wasn’t really that switched on. I did win, but he took me to five sets. I believe he beat me 11-1 in the fourth set, but I can’t remember what he did. Anyway, it worked for him.

Another player in the same league used an odd style, but used it so well thath he was one of the best players in the league. He rarely attacked. He would just roll the ball back with a bit of top spin and set himself away from the table. He never missed. So what that meant was that you had to hit the ball past him to win a point, so it was a good test for your attack.

Also, he would sometimes whack the ball back with all your power plus more, that it would take you by surprise. The only way of beating him would be either to play an outstanding short game or to make the match court very narrow and to use the angles well.

As I’ve said many times before, the most important part about local league table tennis is to have fun. If you’re style’s a bit odd, that’s ok. Even better if you can make it work well for you and pick up wins as a result.

The Role of the Coach in Local League Table Tennis

The role of the coach in local league table tennis is interesting because it is very much an amatuer sport. But, every national player in the UK at least, has played in local leagues at the start of their career so they will have to have been coached at some point during that time.

Of course when you play any sport, you want to improve. But you also want it to stay fun at the same time. When I play in local league, it’s always clear when a player has been coached. It’s usually young players with perfect forehands and backhands, but when they have to deal with backspin, they have no idea what to do!

So I think for a coach, it’s important to teach the fundamental skills to make sure you know what to do in a match situation, but also to push you to get the most out table tennis and be the best you can be.

I have done some coaching and I have been coached a little bit over the years.

I remember the first time I got some ‘proper’ coaching at the first club I was part of. I had recieved some guidance before about basic strokes, spins and serves, but this evening was a dedicated coaching session for the junior players at the club.

It was taking place over several weeks, so I was excited to see how much I could improve. The coach was a well known one in the county. He was successful on the veteran table tennis circuit around the world and he had coached some of the best young players in the region.

On the way to the first session, my mate told me that the coach was known for being very strict and that he would call players out for not doing something correctly. This made me a bit nervous because I just wanted to have fun while improving at the same time.

Anyway, the sessions were really good as I recall. We did lots of basic drills between the players as well as recieving some one-to-one coaching. I remember he put little figurines on one side of the table and told me to knock them down with my forehand drive. Now, my forehand was awful back then. It’s bad now but back then it was laughable.

He soon realised I wasn’t doing it right, but with one slight adjustment by bending my knees I was suddenly able to knock them down!

Some time after this, the local league I played in decided to open a dedicated coaching academy which was held every Sunday in a massive school hall. This was really good and I did learn a lot there, but I felt sorry for the coach because it was impossible for him to attend to 30+ people who turned up so at times it was quite dull.

I actually ended up helping a bit at those sessions becaue my friend and I had just started a table tennis after school club of our own. This was really good, although we weren’t very organised. Loads of kids came to the first session and we didn’t have enough tables for everyone.

After a few weeks a core group of about 10 came every week and it was really good. One of these students actually improved a huge amount and would go on to play in the local league which was really rewarding. My friend and I were actually offered a place on an official coaching course but we declined for some reason.

Anyway, the most recent club I played for was interesting because they had no coaching at all. So, because my friend and I were desperate to improve, we had to look round for coaching.

We tried one place, on a Sunday morning about half an hour away, and it was amazing. It was essentially a better version of the coaching in the big school hall in the first place I played. This was still in a school hall, but there were a lot fewer people so we got some very good quality coaching.

One of the coaches there was a county coach who I knew had trained some of the England junior team. Although I didn’t get to practice with him, another coach spent around one hour with me. We practiced serves, forehands and footwork. It was awesome. Looking back, that was probably the best coaching I have ever had because I was in really good form, so I was able to take on board lots of what the coach told me and put it into practice in league matches.

Unfortunately we only went there once due to other commitments my friend had. But we did travel over an hour to get some coaching with two former England internationals!

It was a coaching session with Carl Prean and Hannah Hicks. It was an amazing experience, but unfortunately I was in terrible form at the time! The coaching was great, but I think nerves may have got the better of me because I couldn’t hit anything!

At one point, Carl played some rallies with me and I was hopeless! Just think, me, playing against a three-time Olympian and being rubbish. Typical!

Anyway, the coaching experiences I’ve had have been really good overall. I think the only problem was that none of them were sustained for very long for various reasons and it would have been better if I had started when I was a bit younger.

The thing to remember is when playing at local league level, you have to keep the fun in it. If it isn’t fun then maybe stop being coached and improve in your own way. Coaching is great and I would highly recommend getting some, but make sure they understand what you want to get from it and they will help you improve.

Random Tournaments

A consistent feature of playing in local league table tennis is that every so often, random tournaments would be organised throughout the season. This was good because it gave us the opportunity to play against players in higher divisions and there wasn’t the pressure of playing for a team. It was just a chance to test your skills against better opposition.

These were seperate from the highly complicated handicap tournaments that I have mentioned previously. They would usually be split by age or division.

In the first league I played in, I started quite young, so I could play in numerous age events in these tournaments such as under 12, cadets, juniors etc. On a few occasions, there would just be me and one other person in the age group so we would just play the final. Therefore, no matter how badly I played, I was guarenteed a runners up trophy!

I remeber one year I played, I didn’t win a single match all day but I came home with two trophies! Very odd.

Of course, as I got older there were less age group competitions I could enter. This lead to me entering the men’s events on a few occasions. This was great because I got to play against some very good quality players. I’m almost certain they would never play at there best against me but it was still a great experience.

There was always a sense of organised chaos at these events. They would usually be on Sunday mornings in a school hall and they were nearly always badly attended. But still, they were great fun.

Seperate to these tournaments, there would also be divisional competitions that would take place just between players from the same division. In my early seasons, I was hopeless in these, but one year I had a great run to the final!

As usual, it was organised chaos. I remember I played against one of the better player in the league in a group match. I played very well and somehow beat him. I thought this would matter as only two out of the three players in the group would qualify for the knockout rounds. However, in true Local League style, the third player in our group never turned up! So the player I had just beaten and me would qualify automatically rendering my great win, pointless!

Anyway, I managed to win the next few matches and somehow ended up in the final where I should face, yep you guessed it, the guy I beat in the group stage! I was confident, but I was also tired. It was a Tuesday night, I had played a bunch of tough match and at this point in my life, I was really unfit.

I knew the guy I was playing was good. He was also fit and lean, so I ran out of gas and he ended up winning quite comfortably.

In the second league I played in, they combined both the tournament types from the previous league into one day. This was great fun, but even more chaotic. They had a really good venue, a huge sports hall, but so many people turned up. To the organisers credit, they did do the best job they could but it was still quite funny.

The first time I played in it, I had to fill out a form saying what events I wanted to play in. It also said there was a £5 entry fee. So when I arrived and gave the organiser the money, he looked almost shocked. I later found out that hardly anyone pays. I tested this the next year by not paying and nobody said anything!

At this event, as well as the usual categories, they also had doubles and mixed doubles. If you didn’t have a partner they would find one for you. The doubles events each time were great fun. I remember the second year I played, I entered the men’s doubles with a friend of mine for a laugh. I knew we wouldn’t win, but I thought it would be a bit of fun.

We played surprisingly well in out first match, but still lost. It was a knockout event, so I thought that would be it. Much later in the day, we were then told we had another match to play. It turned out, we were somehow in the consolation final! Although we lost this too, we still got runners-up trophies. I therefore, somewhere, have a trophy that says Mens Doubles, Runners-Up, Consolation Final. That really does rub it in!

Just before lockdown last year, I had sent off the form for the next tournament, but of course it was cancelled. It’s a shame because I had entered the mens doubles with the captain of my last team. We usually did well at doubles, so I thought we had a good chance of doing well.

So, to summerise my experience of playing in local league tournaments, it would be this:

Random trophies, organised chaos, great fun!

Season 2 – How could I be any worse?

After the steep learning curve of my first season in local league table tennis, I was excited to put all I had practised on to the match table in my second season. I had new team-mates, we would face new teams and it couldn’t have gone much worse!

Despite being able to remember my first season in local league table tennis, the second is very much a blur. Perhaps because I somehow managed to win just two matches in the whole year! Two!! This was my worst season in local league table tennis. After nearly quitting after the first season, I’m amazed I didn’t after this horror show.

For some reason, the team I was in was a slightly weaker version of the one the previous year. I had moved down a letter from team ‘H’ to team ‘I’ and our best player from the year before had moved up a team. Given this, our results were still terrible. None of us on the team won more the six matches. It was hard, but we got through it.

Looking at the league table, it says we won two games that year. However, the team who finished one place above us were team ‘J’ from our own club and won zero matches. But even they managed to get nine more points than us over the season!

Even though I only won two matches, I’m amazed I don’t remember who they were against. I’m sure they would have stood out at the time, but this was almost ten years ago. I would have to assume they were against players from the ‘J’ team.

According to the league table, the new teams that played that year did have some players with different styles. I was still tactically inept at this point, but I don’t remember so many defensive players in the first season. New challenges were brought by players who would chop, and do nothing else. This is mainly because they can’t, as from my young eye, these players looked like they were hundreds of years old!

My consistency wasn’t there yet, so I didn’t know what to do to counter it and neither did any of my team-mates. Although I wouldn’t have known it at the time, this season probably did improve me overall as a player. I knew I needed to work hard over the summer to improve my game and win more matches.

Amazingly, during the next season, something clicked…

The Table Tennis Exchange Trip

Back in 2016, the club I played for took part in its 26th exchange trip with a club in The Netherlands in a town called Schijndel. This occasion was the first time I was involved as part of eight people from the club who flew over for a week and stayed with host families from the Dutch club.

The trip was amazing. During the week, as well as playing table tennis, we took trips around the local area, took in the culture and generally had a good time. It saw many firsts for me too, so this post will explain what went down.

In the dead of night, I met up with the other seven members of the club who were going in the middle of a cinema car park in the centre of our home town. I, for some reason, had brought a massive suitcase with me even though we were only staying for four nights. We just about managed to fit it in to the back of one of the cars, and we set off for Birmingham Airport. Everyone else had packed smartly, but this was my first time on a plane without my parents, so I just packed loads of stuff.

I knew this was a mistake at airport security because I had suncream in my bag which was confiscated much to the amusement of my club-mates. As we boarded the plane, I remember thinking that it looked like a toy or remote control. All the other flights I had been on up to that point had been on huge planes, but this was tiny and had propellers.

Anyway, after we landed and before we went to our host’s town, we had a look round Amsterdam. My best mate and I wandered round with a club-mate who said he knew Amsterdam well, so we willingly followed him thinking he would show us some cool stuff. Soon, it was apparent that was not the case because we ended up in the Red Light District. It was the sort of place that I only realised where I was when it was too late. Ladies in windows etc. You get the idea.

We soon made it back to the meeting point, and waited for the rest of our club-mates to return. When they did, we noticed that one of them looked a bit odd with very red eyes. We came to the conclusion that he must have sampled some of the special ice cream they sell of street corners. Amsterdam is great, in its own unique way.

After this, we got the train to see out hosts. We were divided into four groups of two, with each pair staying with a host family. My best mate and I were with a nice couple who lived in a very modern-looking house. I would be sleeping on a matress on the floor with my mate sleeping on a bed right outside their daughter’s bedroom. I traded comfort for privacy! The house was nice, but I remember it had a very awkward staircase which was wooden and was spiralled so it took me ages to climb and descend as it was really slippy in socks.

So, we settled in and got to know our hosts a bit more. We then met up with everyone and I showed why I am the worst pool player of all time! The next day, we went for a tour of the PSV Stadium which was great because I love football. However, it turned out to be an extra cost, not for the first time in the trip. After this, I noticed in our schedule that we were going to a camel farm which sounded ‘interesting’.

Apparently in trips of the pasts, the Dutch hosts had got the cheapest entertainment possible, so apparently we were very lucky! The camel farm was actually quite fun. I was one of the only people who could tolerate the flavour of camel milk and one of our club-mates had a baby camel named after him, so all was well.

That evening, the table tennis finally began. We were excited to play our Dutch counterparts and when we arrived at the venue, we were very impressed. Unlike the village halls we were used to in the UK, this seemed to be a proper sporting facility. Unfortunately, I don’t remember much about the matches I played except the fact that I lost them all! What I do remember is a rally I watched my best mate play in which he somehow managed to lose a shoe and still win the point!

The venue also had its own bar, one of two we would later find out!

The next day, we went to the city of Den Bosch where we had a tour of the canals. We were all in a little boat, and at one point in the tour, we went into a small tunnel where they projected some fancy lights on to the walls. At this point, our coach who was in his 70s, said a comment so inappropriate for a man of his age, I’m not even going to publish it!

That evening, we actually played some regular tennis, which I am very bad at. I felt sorry for my doubles partner as he would be running round at the back of the court, returning everything, while I just stood helpless at the net!

On our last full day, we visited a Trappist Brewery which is run by Monks. It was an interesting tour, but it was here that I had beer for the first time! I have come to realise now that it was very good quality compared to other beer I have had because I don’t really like it now! I remember we had lunch there and one of our club-mates had so much to drink, he apparently fell in a bush!

On our final evening, we returned to the table tennis venue for a party at the second bar! Before this started, we had to share our thoughts with the group about our trip. My best mate started, and gave the best speech I think I have ever heard. He said how much he hated the trip, thought everyone was awful and that he would never visit again. After, an awkward silence, he then said ‘only joking’, for everyone to realise what he had done. This was good because he was so thorough, that we didn’t need to say anything else because he had covered it all!

The party then commenced and my mate and I drank quite a lot considering we had only tasted beer for the first time earlier that day, but we remained fairly sober throughout the evening. Our friend who fell in the bush wasn’t so lucky, as ended up falling asleep on a table.

After the evening of fun, we returned to our host’s house for one final night. As I got changed for bed, I heard a knock at my door. I opened it to find my mate looking a bit confused. I told me that he had found someone sleeping in his bed, and that the person was wearing his pajamas. I can honestly say I have never laughed so much, I was actually crying. My mate let me have a good laugh to only reveal he was joking and none of that had happened. It didn’t matter though because I just had an image in my mind of him finding a random guy in his bed! Great comic timing on my mate’s part!

So, the trip was over and we said our goodbyes and flew home. This was such a great trip and one I really hope we can repeat in the future. I wonder how many exchnages like this happen in the world of local league table tennis? Do you know of a different one? Let me know!