TTT30 Spring 2023

Ken and Karenza Mathews Story: The Final Episode
1977
The year started with some bad news from Sweden. Hans Alser, the Swedish table tennis player, had been
killed in an air crash. He had been not only a great player - he had been European Champion - but also a very
friendly man; he had been a good friend to many English players in the past including Brian and Mary Wright.
January saw the English Open Championships at Thornaby Pavilion on Teesside. I needed to be there for
meetings and went up on 7 th and 8 th . Although it was a poor tournament in terms of foreign entries, it was
good to see Carole Knight win the Women’s Singles; she beat Jill in the final – a shock result – over five games.
Denis Neale won the Men’s Singles.
On 14 th March, I attended a meeting at the Bonnington Hotel in London with Ron Moseley. Ron worked for
the Press Association and had agreed to be the Press Liaison Officer for the English Table Tennis Association
at the World Championships. We discussed the way in which we would work particularly at press conferences.
Ron was a very nice guy and very experienced in handling press matters - I was very pleased to have the benefit
of his advice and relieved to know that he would be there if there were problems.
A training camp had started at the beginning of March. This was at Lea Green and was for the team that had
been selected for the Worlds, and, incidentally, for the Commonwealth Championships that were to take place
in Guernsey just prior to the Worlds. I had been appointed Manager of the England Team for the World
Championships. The responsibilities included such glamorous things as taking delivery of crates of new clothes,
shirts, shorts, skirts, socks, tracksuits etc for the team. Karenza and I drove up to Lea Green on 6 th March. I
talked to the teams to give them some pointers about what they would have to face as the home team at
Birmingham. The team for the Championships was about 18 strong, ten men and eight women.
The 4 th Commonwealth Championships were held in Guernsey from 16 th to 23 rd March. As our top players
were in training for the Worlds a second team was selected. Players from Hong Kong did very well in the
tournament winning both singles titles; our only title was won by Melody Ludi and Karen Witt who captured
the Women’s Doubles. Hong Kong also won both team competitions with England coming second in each
event.
Just prior to the Worlds I went back to the training camp at Lea Green and went with the players to visit the
venue for the championships; this was to give them an early view of the playing hall. The Championships were
to run from 26 th March to 5 th April. The vast Hall Number 5 (25,000 square metres) at the National Exhibition
Centre (the NEC) had been transformed into a sports exhibition (Sportacus ’77) featuring different sports and
sports’ goods manufacturers. (There was a glass-back squash court, which I was able to play on.) Then there
were two arenas, one with 16 tables, the other, featuring the four show courts.
I drove up to Birmingham on Thursday the 24 th . Karenza and Julie were with me, our friends Terry and Marie
from Ireland. They had booked into a hotel for two or three nights to see the opening ceremony and the
beginning of the team events. They dropped me at the NEC where I met the players and the two team captains,
Peter Simpson (Men) and Bryan Merrett (Women). After practise sessions during the day, we all went back to
Birmingham University where we were to stay during the championships. Transport was by coach; they ran a
constant ferrying service for all the teams during the championships.
The set–up at the NEC was very well managed. The organising committee had worked hard to make sure the
whole event ran as smoothly as possible – the only problem worth mentioning was the canteen arrangements
which could perhaps have been better. All players had tickets and it had been decreed that players would be
served on a first come, first served basis. That was okay – unless a player had just finished one match, say, a
singles match and had to go back to the table for a doubles match soon after. On one occasion I had to
intervene as Denis Neale was faced with exactly that problem. See below!
TTT: Issue 30: Spring 2023
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