Exciting Win Over Australia at Oceania Championships

In front of a boisterous home crowd chanting “Kiwi, Kiwi”, the NZ men’s team clinched a nail-biting 3-2 win over Australia in the Oceania team final. Aaron Li was the star performer with two wins but it was Andrew Hubbard’s match against Australia’s Brett Clarke that had the crowd on their feet. He saved 4 match points on the way to a 16-14 win in the final game.

Andrew Hubbard

The women’s team’s chances faded when Li Chunli was beaten by the two top Australian women. In the individuals Chunli and her sister Karen triumphed in the women’s doubles and six more gold medals were collected by young New Zealanders in age-group events, three of them by Sophie Shu.

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Best Championships Ever

Both the Oceania President (Neil Harwood) and Executive Director (Phil Males) are on record as describing the 2004 Oceania Championships as the “best ever”. A superb compliment in any event but made even sweeter considering the championships were hosted by a provincial NZ Association. James Morris had spent two years ensuring that Northland left nothing to chance with the organization of the biggest Table Tennis event ever held in Whangarei. The event drew record media coverage.

The chief sponsor was Southern Trust and Advance, Whangarei, and the management team supporting James included Colleen Atchison (Sport Northland), Shona Cudby (Tournament Controller) and David Jackson (Referee). Christine Morris led the catering team.

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Olympic Games - Athens

Amid some controversy, our leading men were unavailable for the Oceania Olympic Qualification tournament. The controversy surrounded the NZ Olympic Committee’s selection criteria of considering only those athletes with a realistic chance of finishing in the top half of the field. Our top two women players met the other chief criteria component – a world ranking of 130 or better.

Li Chunli romped through the qualification tournament, unbeaten in the initial round-robin and thus winning the first of three available Olympic team singles spots. Karen Li was extraordinarily unlucky in that she reached the final of the subsequent two knock-out events for the other singles spots but lost both, to players she had beaten in the first round-robin. Playing as a pair, the Li sisters won the doubles qualifying tournament so both went to the Olympics, Karen as a doubles player only.

It was Chunli’s fourth Olympics and Karen’s second. Chunli reached the last 32 by beating 48th seed Tammy Banh (USA) and then lost to world number one Zhang Yining (China). In the doubles the sisters beat the top Australian pair and then, in a spectacular upset, decisively beat 16th seeds Nicole Struse and Elke Wosik (Germany). In the round of 16 they faced an 8th seeded Korean pair and lost four games to two. Their last 16 finish was NZ’s best ever at the Olympics.

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James Morris Steps Off National Stage

After spending more than nine years engaged in coaching and administrative activities at national and international level, James Morris finally stepped back and, as he had done for many years prior to 1995, once again dedicated himself to his home association of Northland.

He moved into the national scene by co-managing and coaching NZ teams at overseas events – familiar territory as he had represented NZ himself for twelve years from the age of 18. In 1999 he stepped up to Board level and availed himself for the dual portfolios of Coaching and High Performance. He excelled particularly in the areas of coach education and proved equally adept at securing coaching and high performance funding from previously unavailable or untried sources.

His workload continued to burgeon as he became National Senior Coach in 2001 and in 2002 accepted a two-year term on the national selection panel.

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Commonwealth Championships

With our top women unavailable due to an intensive preparation campaign for the Olympics, only a men’s team competed at the Commonwealth Championships in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in June.

Peter Jackson, Andy Huang, John Cordue and Simon Wallace finished 6th (of 18 teams) and Peter Jackson reached the quarter-finals in the individual events. James Morris was the team manager and coach.

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World Teams Championships

Aaron Li, Andrew Hubbard, Peter Craven, Karen Li, Sophie Shu and Hanna Squire represented New Zealand at the World Team Championships, played in Qatar and separated from the individual championships for the first time. The men finished 46th while the women were somewhat flattered by a final ranking of 24th. Their placement in the 24 team first division was due largely to the world ranking of Li Chunli - taken into account even though she was unavailable for the championships and didn’t play.

L/R: Aaron Li, Hanna Squire,
Andrew Hubbard, Karen Li,
Peter Craven, Sophie Shu
and James Morris (manager/coach)

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Alan Hounsell Vacates Board Chair

TTNZ’s Board Chairman, Alan Hounsell, did not seek re-election at the November AGM. Serving from the July, 1996 restructure until April, 2004, Alan steered the Board competently through its post-restructure settling down phase and through the funding difficulties which left TTNZ without an Executive Director from September, 1999.

A Table Tennis “outsider” with a business and general sporting background, Alan chaired the sport with a strong sense of objectivity and fairness.

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Death of Bill Hurrey

Former NZTTA President (1968/69), Bill Hurrey passed away at the age of 92.

His memory lives on with the annual presentation of the Bill Hurrey Cup, a trophy for the Association with the largest number of junior titles won at the NZ Championships, which Bill presented in 1979.

For six decades Bill was a revered member of the Northland Association which he helped set up in the 1940s and built to encompass five sub-associations at its peak.

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David Jackson Ends TTNZ Contract

A significant era in NZ table tennis ended in December when David Jackson relinquished his position as provider of technical services to TTNZ.

The era began on David’s election to the (then) NZTTA Management Committee in 1982 and his subsequent appointment to the ranking, tournament play and computer processing sub-committee. He brought with him 12 years of experience designing and operating a results-processing and rating system for Auckland TTA.

The draw for the 1983 NZ Championships was the first to be generated by computer, replacing an extremely labour-intensive manual process.

Over the years the services David Jackson was able to provide steadily increased. Ultimately, in addition to maintaining player ratings, processing tournament entries, recommending seedings and generating draws, they included tournament control, personalized schedules for any player for a whole tournament, instant generation of post-section and consolation draws, media-friendly print-outs of tournament results and full year results for any individual.

David’s knowledge was ahead of its time in New Zealand and his skills are recognized internationally. He serves as a member of the ITTF Ranking Committee.

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NZ Juniors Selected to Attend Swedish Training Facility

Possibly one of Europe’s best table tennis training facilities, Koping, Sweden, hosted an Oceania Junior Talent Team for a period of intensive training in February. Two New Zealanders, Sophie Shu and Binbin Zhu (later known as Ryan Zhu) were selected in the team.

It was a joint ITTF/OTTF initiative arising from the successful NZ hosting of the 2003 World Junior Circuit tournament and was supported by the Oceania Olympic Committee and Butterfly.

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AGM Moves Away From Wellington

Christchurch was the venue for the TTNZ Annual General Meeting. Prior to this year the meeting had been permanently domiciled in Wellington. The decision to rotate the meeting around other centres had been taken after discussion at the 2003 AGM.

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