Empires fall. Bit by bit they disintegrate – marry their mortar with the dust and dirt on the ground. The Ottomans, the Romans, the Persians, the Mongols – all had their era, their might, a trail of subjects and slaves; hubristic legacies now largely forgotten, yet represented by potent dents in the minds of historians and archeologists.

The Bolton Lads’ Club began life in 1889 as the Children’s Bolton Club. It was the same year that gave birth to the Eiffel Tower, Adolf Hitler and Vincent Van Gogh’s The Starry Night.

Founded by two church leaders and three industrialists, acutely aware of the plight of young, cotton mill children and their need, initially, just to be “able to wash, eat and sleep in peace away from their looms”, it served a distinguished role as a hostel.

Less than a decade later, the stampede began: “They came in their hundreds, for of all animals, lads are perhaps the most gregarious. They came to meet their fellows under conditions somewhat more comfortable and convenient than their natural meeting place, the street. They initially came for amusement and for games and for nothing else, and if we had told them it was our intention to improve them they would certainly not have come.

“But it is interesting how quickly their attitude to the club has changed, it is no longer our club, it is theirs, and we merely manage it for them. It is no longer a mere place of amusement, but is a place which plays a real part in their lives. It is a place for honour and for success.”

In 1947 table tennis entered the Lads’ Club’s doors. Bark Street – the old location – welcomed the fevered game, entered its recruits into the Bolton League. And so, the beautiful sport was inaugurated, two decades after the first World Championships in London and the year the International Table Tennis Federation or ITTF was formed (1926).

This led to a crossover point in 1952 – Japan’s World Champion, Hiroji Satoh signalling the end of the hard bat / pimpled rubber era and the rise of the sponge bat. From wiff-waff, to ping-pong, to table tennis sophisticates, the game developed – reducing the net height from 6 ¾” to 6”, introducing US celluloid balls and embracing technology on an unprecedented scale.

The Lads’ Club evolved by introducing girls into its ranks. In 2002, Team BLGC moved to its new £5million premises on Spa Road – the rear of the building resting impressively on White Lion Brow.

Inside, Tomorrows Citizens roam. Sports and games are played – basketball, pool, Xbox, football, boxing, gym. Underneath the Harrison Burton Climbing Wall, however, is a pitiful sight: two TT tables. (There used to be five permanently unfolded.) Numbers are short. Coach Roger Bertrand (07530 690985) and volunteer Ian Monk (07903 827703) have just three 12-18 year olds for the forthcoming September-April season. They are, in many ways, the Blackpool FC of the table tennis league.

What has gone wrong? How can they resurrect the glory days (2012/13) when their ‘A’ team finished a credible 6^th in Division Four?

By its very nature, a youth club loses players. Suddenly, there is nothing to replenish the squad though. The feeder club’s diet is now a mirage.

Bold/passionate, empire-saving youngsters required: Mondays 5-7pm & Thursdays 6-9pm. Bertrand is waiting.

Summer League Final:

Ivory Toasters       12
Hilton C                     10

In the panoramic slide of action inside the Hilton Centre, it is as if a rainbow has fallen. The coloured tops are many, the mannerisms assorted, the styles like a succession of rival comedians.

On the top wall are pinned seven notices: IMPORTANT REMINDER ABOUT SHOES; PLEASE REMEMBER – TURN ON ALL FANS; etc. One imagines they were last read many years ago. One imagines that even if they were waved around by an air stewardess pre-match, the players would still be singularly focused – not bidden by the flat charms of instructive words.

The summer league final is an important marker of talent. It defines a limited field of entrants, affords them the chance of playing against loftier or dubious opposition. And yet the winners are neither recorded in the annual handbook nor engraved on a panel out of reach of sticky hands.

They should be – if only to attract a deeper body of competitors.

No matter. The finalists are of good calibre. Representing the Ivory Toasters are Krishna Chauhan and Wilson Parker – combined age 33; players pulled from a whippersnapper enclave. Hilton C – Chris Naylor and Annie Hudson – are veterans by comparison (73), although mostly loaded up with Naylor’s fifty years, keen reptilian eyes and quick-talking mien.

He kneels and chats beforehand with Division One foe, Mark Speakman, toys with a bottle of water, thinks not of the matches about to unfold but of something more serene.

Hudson, his playing partner, pretty feet bound up in green-trimmed socks and purple Nike, has an air of cross-legged relaxation about her. The kids opposite are nothing she has not seen before.

‘Are you ready?’ comes the prompt from Parker, his hair quiffed to the side, looking dandy – surely washed less than two hours ago.

He steps up. Opposite is Hudson, the tormentor, the British League doyenne – not to be fazed, not to be out-swaggered by the pumped-up game of Parker.

Except, Parker leads 11-9, 6-0. Hudson appears ragged – hitting too many long; a slight look of disgust permeating her face. Composure rarely leaves her, troops out of town, yet she seems wounded by the Parker artillery – unsettled and faint.

A nick of the table reduces matters to 6-2, Parker ‘net and off’ 7-5, a trademark Hudson positional shot: 10-8. Then comes the Hudson resilience, the know-how: four straight points – Parker tossing away the second set (10-12) as if on an agitated horse.

Naylor calls a tactical break – has a word with his recovering lioness. We then see the new Annie, the old Annie – whichever makes this game look so easy. Barely moving, it is as if every ball TomToms to her blade. Parker falls, loses sets three and four 10-12, 9-11.

‘I just choked – whole game went down the drain.’ A glimmer of honesty beneath the often tart mouth – a player’s fortune reversed within minutes. This is not football, or cricket or any of those ‘long’ games. It is table tennis – judge, jury and executioner; the swing of a bat critical and unforgiving.

Parker “The Rottweiler” is fortunate to have the calm, southpaw Chauhan in his camp. Apoplectic tirades suggest otherwise during their doubles loss (2-3), but Chauhan “The Labrador” – two singles wins (3-2 versus Naylor and Hudson) – is instrumental despite reigning champ, Parker’s timely skinning of Naylor (3-0).

“The dread of getting old is a universal, if intermittent preoccupation. ‘As I give thought to the matter,’ said Cicero, ‘I find four causes for the apparent misery of old age: first, it withdraws us from active accomplishment; second, it renders the body less powerful; third, it deprives us of almost all forms of enjoyment; fourth, it stands not far from death.’”

2014 will not come around again – neither in number, nor in its sweeping assailment of great names. Football has mourned the imperious Alfredo Di Stefano (aged 88), the exquisite Tom Finney (91) and the explosive Eusebio (71). Politics/journalism has lost the ameliorative Bob Crow (52), the messianic Tony Benn (88) and the outspoken Joe McGinniss (71).

One could compare the year – if ballsy enough – with 2005 when literature lamented the departure of Arthur Miller (89), Hunter S. Thompson (67) and Saul Bellow (89) – men whose perception of that around them astounded and left in wonderment the reader and listener.

Squeezed into this life are naivety, easy optimism, flair, fear and the wisdom of knowing that we know nothing. Beyond the pallor and impoverishment of old age, however, are those ready to defy Cicero’s first cause; players and sportsmen for whom creaking knees and ravaged minds are modest hindrances.

Across eight table tennis clubs, the septuagenarians stretch – the two octogenarians in the league, Brian Hall and Colin Roberts respectively ruminating over the “continued challenge…obsession” and the perhaps unmatched feat of winning “seven Ron Hindle trophies”.

The bug that is table tennis surpasses the doom-like proclamations of hardy philosophers (“Wrinkles are harbingers of a slide to nothingness, not marks of a transcendence to come.”) It casts a wand over leaden feet and comfy chairs. The tales of the ‘oldies’, of the players that keep on running are but specks in a whirling universe, yet they must be heard:

Alan Bradshaw – “I did my 2-years national service from 1954 to 1956 [during which time] I won a lot of regimental table tennis contests. After winning thirteen competitions in the NAAFI canteen, I was advised not to enter any more.”

Neville Singh – “I used to play on a rolling and pitching ship in the Atlantic Ocean.”

Ian Wheeldon – “There was a room under the local church where we could practise at any time…collecting the key from the vicarage.”

Geoff Rushton – “Coached my son, Andrew to the Commonwealth Games silver medal (2006).”

Richard Reading – “First played table tennis at Bovington (Army) Camp in 1960. It led me to becoming an international athlete.”

The birth certificate of Dave Parker will be scrutinised next month. He will be the newest member of the clan, of the 70+ brigade and to Brian Hall a mere pup.