Frank loses his singles crown to brother George in Kidderminster table tennis league

The brothers did battle in the first semi-final of the league’s 78th finals night, which was staged at Cookley Sports & Social Club.

The younger Carroll got off to a fast start against the champion and was relatively untroubled during the course of his 3-0 victory.

The other semi-final saw the brothers’ father Pete making an unexpected appearance in the latter stages of the league’s blue riband event – but he was no match for high-class defender Matt Squires, the Cookley player who topped the averages in division one for the season.

Squires’ 3-0 victory set up a keenly-anticipated clash of styles in the final against the all-out attacker George Carroll. The 23-year-old from Bewdley Institute took advantage of the fast conditions to power his way to an outstanding 3-0 victory against Squires, who had excelled at the Inter League county event at Evesham the week before.

It may not have been the most nail-biting of finals in terms of drama but the standard of table tennis was impressively high.

Prior to the open singles final, 14-year-old Archie Goulding turned in an exceptionally consistent performance to win the Handicap singles final against veteran Chris Giles.

Archie, younger than his opponent by some 60 years, showed few signs of nerves as he edged ahead in the four-game encounter.

Indeed, he made far fewer mistakes overall than his more experienced opponent and emerged as comfortable victor, despite Chris having a 12.5-point headstart.

The first final of the night saw hard-hitting Qian Zhang, of Bewdley Institute, overcome Paul Smith to win the Restricted Singles, for players outside the top division.

She is the first female player in living memory to have won the trophy and is now expected to play in the top division next season.

Guest of honour on the night was league president Iain Perks who has held every major position on the league committee and spent many years coaching youngsters at Wolverley High School sessions.

Respects were paid to former players Les Carroll and Keith Wilkinson who passed away during the course of the season.

The remaining trophies were presented at the league’s annual meeting, which took place at Cookley.

Earlier, a strong team representing Kidderminster narrowly missed out on taking the County Inter League trophy at Evesham – despite going through the whole competition undefeated.

The Kidderminster team of George Carroll, Frank Carroll and Matt Squires won all their games against the other leagues in the county – bar one against Evesham, which was drawn.

The home team had a better win record than Kidderminster, so retained their Inter League trophy.

Other competitions were played to a conclusion earlier in the season.

Martin Madkins won the veterans title, defeating Pete Carroll in a rather one-sided final after a tough semi-final five-setter against Adrian Jones. As expected, Steve Horton and Stephane Bonnafous were largely untroubled as they cruised to victory in the Vets’ Doubles over Dave Stephens and Kwok Ng. They were unable to repeat their success in the open doubles, however, losing to Frank and George Carroll.

Pete Carroll took the Super Vets title, beating his Bewdley team mate Trevor Davies 11-9 in the fifth after a tense encounter and his son Frank was as surprised as anyone to win the Hard Bat title after a dogged performance against Adrian Argyle in the final.