Table Tennis England - Plastic Ball Update

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Here is a link to TTE's updated plastic ball statement:


http://tabletennisengland.co.uk/news/plastic-balls-updated-statement-from-table-tennis-england/


It looks like they are pushing ahead with a date of 1st July 2015 to enforce the adoption of the plastic ball for all "Competitive" TT in England. I guess if your league is TTE affiliated, you won't be able to use celluloid from 1st July.


Bearing this in mind, how ready is everyone in England? My club has a big issue with the lack of orange plastic balls, and we would have to do some work on our venue to allow us to switch to white balls...
 
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Our main season runs through winter, September-March. We have a more relaxed Summer League too, which runs May-August. So the 1st July deadline falls in the middle of the summer league. Some tough decisions to be made for us, with no clear idea about the potential introduction of orange plastic.
 
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I guess they are pushing for the Sep-March main season, but then if the "more relaxed" summer league is an official league too, then it would be funny - starting off with cellu and finishing off with plastic etc.

Orange plastic is indeed a huge headache. I know quite a few places that have repainted due to no orange plastic available.
Most countries has moved over to plastic already however.

In South Africa, there is no news of this year moving over (season being april to oct) to plastic balls.
So likely SA will only move over in 2016 April. However, international competition in Africa is already using new balls and most of the players first exposure to the new ball is in those tournaments lol (including the recent complete African senior champs)

I hope your national body will (together with the stores) secure enough balls for the clubs.
You should ask them about orange balls, I think that is fair......

On the other side - make sure your clubs increase the budget, as you would need to forecast for more balls being purchased, compared to cellu
 
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Oh yeah, I haven't seen any 3 star 40+ yellow balls. Do they even have them yet? It is sort of amazing how bad the quality of the seamed ones still are when it is more than half a year after they started this. And how expensive and hard to get they are. Something is off.

Would your club need darker walls, floors, or both?
 
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I guess they are pushing for the Sep-March main season, but then if the "more relaxed" summer league is an official league too, then it would be funny - starting off with cellu and finishing off with plastic etc.

Orange plastic is indeed a huge headache. I know quite a few places that have repainted due to no orange plastic available.
Most countries has moved over to plastic already however.


The summer league is run quite informally, so I would usually say that they won't particularly be bothered about enforcing the 1st July deadline. However, we have recently been registering summer league fixtures and results with the national TT league management website (https://www.tabletennis365.com/potteries), so that might bring some additional rule monitoring.



TTE's stance on this is a little odd, because they seem to be saying that the ITTF is imposing a plastic-only rule from above. However, the ITTF have gone on record in the past to say it is up to each individual national org to decode on ball implimentation. So that's a little confusing.

Oh yeah, I haven't seen any 3 star 40+ yellow balls. Do they even have them yet? It is sort of amazing how bad the quality of the seamed ones still are when it is more than half a year after they started this. And how expensive and hard to get they are. Something is off.
Would your club need darker walls, floors, or both?

Here is a link to a very interesting topic over at OOAK where I ask Dr. Torsten Küneth (ITTF Equipment Committee, Member in charge of ball approvals) about orange plastic.


http://ooakforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=69&t=26354&start=135


His answer was very disappointing, IMO. Basically, the ITTF don't enforce the production of two colours - it's a supply and demand issue for the manufacturers. So no one is really interested in producing orange plastic at the moment. It's sad that there isn't even a projected date when some might appear on the market. That makes it very difficult to plan at the ground level.


We would need to sort our walls out. We can't paint because it's a multi-purpose venue and we don't own it. We will probably come up with some curtain-based solution.
 
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Got my sympathies....

The curtain-base solution sounds interesting.
I think it is a good idea.

I know clubs/leagues who used oranges balls in the past, now also need to budget for new clothings (for white ball).
So colour change is a extremely troublesome and costly change.

I just hope, you won't do all these changes and come june 2015, orange balls will be available....
But yeah, nothing yet from factory and ITTF approval, so my guess is, no orange ball will come out in next 6 months
 
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Yeah, I don't get how the ITTF thinks they can change over to plastic when the production is so bad, there aren't enough, they break faster than you can buy them and they really don't even bounce well. So silly. And for all that, they cost so much.
 
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Yeah, I don't get how the ITTF thinks they can change over to plastic when the production is so bad, there aren't enough, they break faster than you can buy them and they really don't even bounce well. So silly. And for all that, they cost so much.

They aren't thinking anymore about plastic balls. Like it or not, they have already moved over to plastic totally. We are just in the bedding-in period.
 
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They aren't thinking anymore about plastic balls. Like it or not, they have already moved over to plastic totally. We are just in the bedding-in period.

Yeah, they have moved over to the plastic balls and there aren't enough and they only have white, and the balls are not actually ready yet and they break faster than they can be made. hahaha.
 
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