After a hard day’s play on Saturday in the tightly fought qualification event 10 men and 4 Women came through to qualify for Sunday’s play.
The men: Artur Bialek, Michal Korycki, Sam Logue, Joey Nelson, Thomas Earley, Zak Earley, Art McLoughlin, Tom Davis, Daryl Strong and Conor Gallagher and the Women: Thuy Lin Cashman, Erin Thompson, Nga Nguyen and Claire Heller all fought valliantly through very tough matches to earn their places in Sunday’s Main event.
For some of the qualifiers, Sunday would prove to be a difficult day but a benficial one none the less. For others it would prove a very successful day, getting their chance to prove themselves against the best players in the country. Some stand out performers from the qualifiers on the Men’s side were Conor Gallagher and Art McLoughlin. Both showed how much they have improved recently with some beautiful Table Tennis over the two days. Conor finished in 9th place while young Art finished in 14th. On the Women’s side, it was Thuy Lin Cashman who produced the stand out performance perhaps of the whole weekend. She reached the final of the main event losing out to Mia O’Rahilly Egan 4-1 in the final. Thuy Lin showed vast improvements over the two days. This result will only give her confidence and help her to improve further.
It was business as usual for the seeds in the Men’s singles groups with all the seeds going through to the quarter final. There were a couple of upsets though! DCU’s Ryan Farrell played one of the best matches of his life to overcome the eventual winner Artur Bialek 3-1. Ryan was then unfortunate to draw the eventual runner-up Michal Korycki in the quarter final. Ryan put up a great show but was unfortunate to lose 4-0. The other upset was Alexander Gillen beating Michal Korycki in the group! An excellent performance from Sascha. He will take so much confidence from this win and continue to improve. The Semi finals saw two familiar face in Gavin Maguire and Paul McCreery. The two national team regulars had no major issues finding their way to the semi finals. Unfortunately for the two boys their days would end there. Paul lost out to Michal 4-2 in a brilliant match as did Gav to Artur.
After a long day the Two Pingzone players battled it one last time. Artur Bialek came through the winner 4-1 to claim the Irish Senior Classification title.
In the Women’s event there was a surpirse in the form of Irish number 1 Katie McGLone finsihing 3rd in group A on countback. She fell to the in-form Thuy Lin Cashman 3-1. Mia O’Rahilly Egan topped group B with a great win over Rebecca Finn. The Semi finals got under way with Thuy Lin facing Rebecca and Mia facing Sabina Devereux. It was Thuy Lin who cause another upset beating Rebecca Finn 4-3. The second semi fianl saw Mia come through a 4-2 winner over vastly experienced, top 4 regular, Sabina Devereux. This set up a final between the two in form players of the day. A fantastic match full of nail biting rallies saw the classy Mia O’Rahilly Egan come out on top by 4 games to 1.
Please click the links below to see full results of Sunday’s play.
Click here for the Men’s post group stage results
Click here for the Women’s post group stage results
Click here for Mens and Womens group stage results
