Tigers too strong in Great Flinders Table Tennis

In a very close contest, we could easily break down where things could have been but the X-factor tonight was one Adam Butterworth!

Not only did he rock up on time, but he was ready for action.

He played the best match he's played in years according to himself taking down panthers

Dan Challinger to nail his first win in competition over him.

Celebrity referee Reece Fordham umpired and was having trouble keeping up with turning the scores over with the amount of winners Adam was smashing going on to win 8-11, 11-7, 11-8, 7-11, 12-10.

He also teamed up with Shane Stockham (who just never loses) to take apart Dan and Isaac Telfer with Adam again proving pivotal to help smash the panthers pairing in straight sets.

Tigers Slav Kolega played the patience game and outlasted Wade Gray in 5 competitive sets and for what was a small upset, 11-8, 15-13, 4-12, 8-11, 11-8.

Panthers John Theakstone had one one of his better nights of the season winning 3 of his 4 matches to add some respectability to panthers scoreboard and fill in Isaac Telfer also had a couple wins on the board.

The main match was a fizzer, Panthers' Dan C always struggles against Shane S but he can usually get a few points.

On this occasion, stocky bent Dan over his lap and gave him the wooden spoon smacking him silly.

Even after stocky belted dan in the first 2 sets, he couldn't even lose a set on purpose to get an extra hit because Dan was so useless.

Final scores were 5, 3, 9.

A complete demolition with Dan actually winning 1 set all night in total.

Best for Tigers the obvious Shane Stockham who most likely won't lose again for the rest of the season.

Best for Panthers, a surprising but very welcomed John Theakstone with a treble.

Bottom of the table gladiators absolutely smashed finals blind cropped with the whole team winning matches that looked 50/50 on paper.

Gladiators Russell Fordham played a blinder tonight and as the teams number one played exactly like a number one should winning all four tonight.

It wasn't without a scare though with a massively entertaining match in the first round of the night against Croppos Ben Southam scraping home to win 11-6, 12-10, 6-12, 10-12, 11-2.

Russ also got hold of Lester Barnes taking him in straight sets tonight in the next chapter of their rivalry.

Closest match of the night was between the priest John Folkman and Junior primary teacher Marty Sheridan, in the end and with a bit of luck gladiators John just snuck home in an absolute nail biter 12-10, 8-12, 7-12, 11-9, 18-16.

Not many sets go to that length let alone being the final deciding set.

Gladiators Matt McLachlan found some singles form and took both against Lester and Ben, both highly fancied opponents but only conceding a set each in both of them.

Best for gladiators as mentioned before was rusty with the full compliment of 4, best for Croppos were Marty and Staggy with 2 wins each.

One was teaming up together to win their last double.

Lions raced out of the blocks with 3 wins to 1 in the first round of singles, lions Mark Strycharski, Nathy Fong and Sally Kunze all won their matches against Darren Atkins, Troy Sederstrom and Peter Lee respectively while Dodgers Angelika Sederstrom was the only one to put a win on the board defeating Lesley Kolega to complete the first round.

The doubles were split evenly at two wins each and there were a couple of 5 set marathons which both went the way of lions.

After coming off a hard loss last week, lions Fongy turned it on in his singles matches tonight, the first was against Troy Seders giving him a total of 12 points for the match (5, 3, 4) and then his opposite opponent Darren Atkins.

There were some massive rallies played and Darren even had a chance to seal the deal at 10-8 up in the fifth however nath hung strong and with ice in his veins show balls of steel to come back and rip Darren's heart out winning 14-12, 11-5, 6-12, 10-13, 13-11.

Lions Mark Strycharski came back from 2 sets to 1 down and also 8-9 down to take a very well earned and highly entertaining contest over Troy Seders 5-11, 11-3, 8-12, 11-5, 11-9.

Best on for lions was the fung master and for dodgers Angelika won 3 of the teams 4 wins for the night.