Milestone for table tennis

The luminaries of New Zealand table tennis were toasted at the ASB Leisure Centre on Saturday evening as the game's national organisation held its 75th Jubilee Dinner and inducted six of their best into its Hall of Fame.
More than 90 guests from all over the country attended the dinner, with the daughter of one of the inductees, long time administrator Alf Harding, travelling from Australia to attend.
"The cream of the past and present were celebrated at the dinner and there was a lot of history acknowledged with a power point archival display ... I think Northland can be pretty proud of how things went," Northland organiser James Morris said.
Harding and Ron Menchi were the administrators honoured, while four top players were added to the list.
Canterbury's Jan Morris, the winner of five national titles, and Yvonne Fogerty, a former Australian Open winner were the female players inducted with Barry Griffiths and Peter Jackson the male players honoured. Jackson who played at the top level for more than two decades in the 1980s and 90s was one of the few players to have made a career out of the sport by playing as a professional in France for 12 years.

 The game has struggled in the provinces since its heyday in the late 1970s-early 1980s, but continues to do well in the cities.
 President of TTNZ Ron  Garrett said the numbers had declined in Northland but the clubs still remained fairly strong.
"They haven't got the named players it used to have," he said.
He said the national organisation has two aims to re-establish the sport for the future.
"We'd like to keep developing the game at the lower level, getting participation levels up and that will probably be done with more paid administrators - we have good numbers of volunteers but there still has to be someone there to organise them."
The second aim is to try and lift the high performance area of the game and that's hard  it doesn't attract the money that some sports do. "We're not really a spectator sport as such - although it's a good game to watch, it doesn't attract big crowds," Garrett said.
 "When [Chinese-born Kiwi] Li Chunli was winning games on the international stage a couple of years ago, the association noticed a spike in playing numbers - particularly among girls and when she disappeared off the scene that interest died off."