Gus Gold's Pre-Season Analysis

Heading into its second regular season, ARTTSL faces a number of major issues, the two most prominent of which are, although at first not clearly, related.

They say Rome wasn’t built in a day. It also wasn’t built in two years. ARTTSL is never going to reach the scale of Rome, but it’s certainly set an ambitious growth agenda within its first two seasons, one that would make Caesar green with envy.

Let’s consider how this all happened: Launching its first season with a modest eight First Division licenses, the last of which were fought over pre-season by several marginal clubs, ARTTSL surprised everyone by announcing just one month later the establishment of a Second-Division Challenger League with another eight licenses, with the opportunity for the top six to progress to First Division in 2010 at the expense of the two most lowly-ranked First Division sides, expanding the total number of First Division licenses to twelve. Then, at the end of the season, they announced a further four Second Division licenses, to facilitate expansions in Australia’s three largest cities, forced the merger of Wellington and Auckland to allow the entry of Singapore, and talked it all up as they bravest agenda in sport in the Southern Hemisphere. Certainly the biggest agenda. Brave is an interpretation. Foolish remains to be seen.

Did you find that previous paragraph unnecessarily complicated and convoluted? If so, sorry, but that’s about the best way to represent the development of ARTTSL to date: unnecessarily complicated and convoluted. There’s no systematic and clear way to describe it as there is no systematic or clear approach in the management of the fast-expanding multi-national league.

Now anyone who follows my oft-maligned commentary would know I’ve been a strong advocate for a cross-continental Rebound Table Tennis League for some time, with the inclusion of a limited number of international teams in nearby countries such as New Zealand or Indonesia. On paper, this is what has been achieved. In reality it’s anything but, because such a thing needs to be built gradually, possibly over a period of five to ten years, or more. Not two. This has led to a range of issues, from logistics (coordinating multiple fly-away matches is expensive and complicated, and not easily honed in the short-term), to club issues due to the number of new clubs in large but relatively remote areas relative to the rebound table tennis heartlands on the eastern seaboard of Australia and in New Zealand.

Furthermore, not content with targeting nearby northern neighbours such as Indonesia, a strong rebound table tennis-playing nation, they targeted Singapore, a major centre with many flights, but it’s seven thousand kilometres away, a long flight, and hardly part of the Australasian region. With such long travel and the tricky logistics this brings about, I fear Singapore will become the Canberra Raiders of ARTTSL – strong at home, a push-over away. A 50% win ratio allows for reasonable seasons but you’re very unlikely to win a Premiership. So how excited will Singaporeans get over their new local side is not a great bet for mine.

The prime example of remote club establishment difficulties is Perth. Rebound table tennis is still in its relative infancy in the western capital, and the club is hardly flush with funds, and are still struggling to finish an up-to-ARTTSL-standard home table. Hence the new Perth club have bought mostly cheap, young players from across Australia, many from country and regional areas. With few senior players, or ex-players tied to the club, to guide the young players in the big city environment, there is what Perth Director Samuel Thompson recently described as a leadership vacuum. This has led to a number of scandals, including the most recent involving players acting up in Melbourne after their surprise Pre-Season Trophy Semi-Final victory.

Of course Perth are not the only club to have discipline issues, and ironically to some degree their problems have been magnified by their exposure due to their success, having finished second on the ladder in the 2009 regular season (only to crash out of the finals in two games and finish fourth). If Perth can win the upcoming Pre-Season Trophy Final against Newcastle it will hopefully turn some of the negativity around and allow the club to capitalise on a positive outcome.

Another clear down-side of the fast expansion is the potential for dissatisfaction among Second-Division clubs, with everything from the structure of the Pre-Season Trophy draw to the price of eggs in China able to antagonise them. I’m not saying I agree with all of their concerns, or even many of them, but this is where the two-tier competition is somewhat of a poor compromise, because it runs the risk of disillusioning Second Division sides and potentially driving them to form a competing break-away rebel league, and such whispers have reportedly already started. If ARTTSL are so sure they want their twenty-team competition, which effectively saturates every major population centre on Australia and New Zealand, they may be better off accepting all sides as First Division, and this could be achieved with a parallel two-conference system similar to that of the American NFL’s NFC and AFC. However this still leaves the problem of trying to keep twenty sides afloat.

My own sense is that the Australasian region can support at most sixteen teams, with twelve or fourteen possibly being an optimal number for long-term sustainability. Time will tell if the nature of the free market can prevail over the enforced expansion and the competition retracts by natural attrition with teams collapsing and closing or merging. This of course has its down-sides in failed investment and dissatisfied shareholders.

On the plus side, the Pre-Season Trophy has shown the 2010 rule changes will provide more exciting rebound table tennis. Most of all, the new ten centimetre gap between the net and the backboard has opened up the play, reducing the value of close, careful play and over-backspinning of the ball. It has allowed the big topspin hitters normally more comfortable in regular table tennis to come to the fore. Some have been critical of this, saying it makes it less a game of skill and more one of power. I disagree. I think it allows for both styles of play as there are still plenty of points that end up tight and close to the net. It’s allowed for more variety in the game which can only be a good thing.

Sorry however to finish on a sour note but it would be remiss not to mention the poor standard of refereeing overall in the Pre-Season Trophy. There have been so many errors it’s hard to know where to start, so I’ll just mention the one that gets the furthest up my goose. The interpretation of the double-touch rule has been misread again and again and again. To me it’s clear: If a player is making a continuous movement without a change in momentum of the bat, then double-contact is to be considered a single shot and not penalised. How hard can it be? But no, the refs just wanna jump on it and give the point to the opposition. No no no no no. I hope they can improve in this area as the regular season gets underway.

So now we come to the final of the Pre-Season Trophy. I must admit I’d prefer to see Newcastle win as they’re the most professional of the new clubs and they haven’t had the scandals of Perth. That said I think Perth rightly hold the favourites tag and a win would be popular with many. If they can pull it off I won’t begrudge them their success, but would hope they would use the success as a spring-board to foster a new sense of focus in the club, clean up their discipline issues and stop bringing the game into disrepute.

Finally, I’ve been asked again and again and again who I think will be ARTTSL Premiers for 2010. Have you noticed how everyone wants to say who they think will win but backs it up with if and buts? Well, here’s a no-frills prediction you can hold me to:

Newcastle.