Bandits, hustlers and ringers all descend from the same family line. Generally speaking they have had parts in old Westerns (mixing it up with Clint Eastwood), have hung around pool rooms waiting for the notes to stack up or have stood on the first tee at golf clubs with concealed smiles (their better scorecards destroyed before the hearth).

Raymond Isherwood, table tennis’s 94% man from Division Four and bit-part 27% man from Division Two must have perfected the position of his holster for he regularly slays summer league opposition courtesy of his blazing ‘8’ handicap.

Controversial and unwieldy such a buffer appears to be – at least to the players that stand ten or eleven feet in front of him; the number impaling their senses given its preposterousness.

Isherwood himself is only semi-contrite: “Yeah – it’s wrong, but I’m not moaning.”

A somewhat stocky player, not obviously skilful or threatening, Isherwood serves the ball as if making bread. His hands belie the archetypal clumsiness of the ‘big man’, turning the ball into a spinning piece of dough, floured up and ready to bake.

The results so far – assisted by his mesmeric serve – have been methodical if slightly tainted by the furore which surrounds this particular competition each year: 11-7, 9-11, 10-12, 11-9, 11-5 versus Paul Brandwood; 8-11, 11-7, 11-9, 11-2 versus Bob Bent;  6-11, 11-6, 11-2, 11-6 versus Krishna Chauhan; 10-12, 11-9, 9-11, 11-6, 10-12 versus Wilson Parker; 11-4, 12-10, 11-7 versus John Biggins; 11-7, 12-10, 11-2  versus David Holden.

Apart from the Parker reverse (at one stage prompting the titanic cry of “He’s five-nil up!” just a point into the set), the Isherwood cruise ship has ploughed through big name after big name. And it is this leisurely ice-breaking which has led to calls for a further revamp of the handicap system.

How can this man be ranked alongside Division Four’s 29% player, Scott Brown the critics demand when he is three times more successful? How can he be three shelves lower than the Ladybridge duo of Brian Greenhalgh (handicap 5) and John Cole (5) when he recently sent them stumbling to relegation courtesy of three and four set victories in the winter league?

Born in July 1991 and a carpet fitter by trade, Isherwood – one could say – has been given the opportunity of smothering his opponents with underlay before the play has even begun. Invited into the ‘last man standing’ wonderland of unburdensome competition, he has taken full advantage of this bountiful scheme like an otter discovering a fish bar.

Apolitical, yet with the teeth of Tony Blair, Isherwood when not playing ‘the bandit’ is actually an astute player. Coached diligently by Billy Russell and a regular attendee of Hilton’s (unofficial) “Pro night” each Thursday, his game in the medium term is expected to be that of a Division One player.

“Lower working class” beginnings have not halted the man from Gilnow. They have merely instilled greater tenacity and fight. And such is the commitment of Isherwood – another product of the Bolton Lads’ and Girls’ Club – that his notorious pre-match meal of burger and coke has been replaced with steamed chicken and water (and a splash of Thai boxing).

Asked if he has any heroes, he replies “No” but then thinks again: “My dad due to his determination.”

There can be fewer noisier players on the table tennis circuit than Hilton’s latest recruit, Josh Sandford.

Set alongside the league’s current controversy overlords, Paul ‘Mad Dog’ McCormick, Mark ‘Clubber Lang’ Martin and the heaving tension which resides between Premier rivals Ramsbottom ‘A’ and Flixton, Sandford would appear to revel in his new-found acting role.

The purveyor of sarcastic witticisms and verbal musings, Sandford will undoubtedly be misunderstood in many quarters. His occasional bombastic ravings will be met by a peeping through the dividing curtain and admonishment from his fellow amateurs.

Escaping or evading the Bolton Table Tennis League’s iron clad rules is beyond most and Sandford, it is predicted, will come a cropper at some point in the near future if without restraint.

A cursory glance at the Code of Conduct suggests the potential shackling of even the land’s least volatile personages (Postman Pat and The Beano’s Walter Brown, be warned!):

“All players must show respect for their opponents, umpires and spectators by conducting themselves in a sporting manner. Gratuitous swearing, intimidation or misuse of equipment must not take place at any time on the premises of any match under the control of the League.”

Born in September 1993 and introduced to the game under the stewardship of unorthodox Frenchman and bearded wonder, Roger Bertrand, it was for Sandford – as with many unfocussed teenagers – a revelatory moment, a trip to the table tennis orphanage or rather the Bolton Lads’ & Girls’ Club.

“I started going to the Lads’ Club when I was about 14 to stop me being on the streets causing trouble. I didn’t start playing TT ‘til I was 15 and I loved it from day one.”

After the ‘orphanage’ or feeder club via the steady duo of ex-Ladies no.1, Andrea Holt and Division One flamethrower, Graham Clayborough, Sandford donned his frame with the red and black training gear of Farnworth TTC.

Taught the technical aspects of the game by the 5-times National Champion, his game developed well. In the 2011/12 season, he played across two divisions and ended with the respectable win percentages of 50 (Division 2) and 84 (Division 3).

For an 18-year-old, it wasn’t explosive or likely to augur a rush of scouts, but it was noticeably decent in what was only his second full season.

The real flash pan stuff came the season before in what was a temporary cloaking into musketeers of the apprentices and the master – Craig Duncan, Sandford and Bertrand scooping the 2011 Warburton Cup under the guise of Hilton F.

Benjamin Disraeli once said: “Youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age a regret.” Sandford, in 2014, may just be on the cusp of something truly good in order to escape such a fate.

Humour still drives him (understandably so). He has the obligatory youthful passport of a large tattoo and often speaks above 65 decibels, yet his planned 2014/15 Division One team including Wilson Parker and Craig Duncan promises to be a Hadron Collider of sorts.

Either that or a derailed train. With ‘The Sandman’, you never quite know.

The week after the Winter League season ends, Hilton Table Tennis Centre plays host to the Divisional and Warburton Cup finals. Days later, a different kind of show comes to town.

Call it the Oscars. Call it a ‘plumped up cushion’ of an evening. The Closed Championships are – to many – the highlight of the season; a bountiful gathering of kith and kin.

It is the one night when you see a solitary table basking in the centre of the hall – plastic chairs, not seen in an aeon, prized out of the storeroom to accommodate the merry and expectant crowd.

There are no tuxedos or ball gowns on display, no paparazzi (with the exception of the odd graceless snap from a mobile phone), but rather a sea of faces awaiting the multitude of talent.

Six finals offer solace and comfort to those in attendance – table tennis bats occasionally fluttering through the air like the webbed wings of their namesake.

In the growing crowd, you see the familiar faces of Dave Parker (flat cap and white tash), Malcolm Rose (blue-lined coat and glasses), James Young (mysterious girl in tow) and Barry Walsh (bob hat and a smile that refuses to retire).

Practising beforehand is the Stiga-clad 10-year-old, Amirul Hussain in readiness for his Junior Singles final with 16-year-old, Wilson Parker. It is reminiscent of when the gifted Danni Taylor used to entertain the crowd before the night got under way.

Except, Amirul is the ETTA’s 7^th-ranked ‘Under 13 Boy’; he thus addresses the table with the composure of a starship commander. Parker – his name familiar to aficionados of the Bolton game – is quarrelsome at times, intolerant of his own deficiencies. Hussain, the shorter player by about a foot, whistles through this encounter (11-5, 11-9, 11-3) with panache.

Parker need not despair though. A Handicap Singles finalist also, retribution may be his against ‘Le Roadie’, Dennis Collier. Collier, famous for his defensive meanderings, loses the first set 11-9 – the Parker +3 handicap proving invaluable. After that something cracks in the Collier game and Parker rolls home 11-5, 11-5.

There is a conflated hush and buzz about the place this evening – a sense that the matches before us are part of a wider whirlwind. And we are in the vortex of its shifting swirl.

Next is the Handicap Doubles – the grey-haired, Keith Dale and Lancashire belle, Annie Hudson versus Steve Hathaway and Dave Scowcroft. It is the only four-setter of the night: 11-4, 11-13, 11-8, 16-14; plenty of nerve from the grinning assassins, Dale and Hudson.

Interspersed between these matches is Paul Brandwood. I had a duty in storing up his results, in lingering with the hard statistics of this man. Why? Because despite his modest Premier win percentage (52%) and the gulf between himself and the elite (85%+ men), he can turn it on if he chooses.

On the way to his three finals Brandwood weaved his way past some of the lesser names, but he did it in the manner of a seal swimming through a kelp forest. It was, on occasion, like witnessing a re-signing of the Magna Carta.

I cannot say any more.

Results

Veterans (40+): Brandwood beats Collier 11-8, 10-12, 11-5, 3-11, 12-10

Level Doubles: Brandwood/Mick Dore beat Collier/Steve Barber 9-11, 11-9, 4-11, 11-8, 11-8

Level Singles: Brandwood beats Barry Elliott 11-5, 11-4, 12-10

“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”

I heard these words for the first time while watching a film with my children over the Christmas period. I suppose they act as an emphatic plea to us all. Henry David Thoreau – author of them and the famous Walden (1854) – lived such a short life himself (dying aged 44) yet, as with many of his quotes, observed things in a rich, philosophical manner.

Numerous great minds were inspired and influenced by Thoreau: Leo Tolstoy; George Bernard Shaw; Mahatma Gandhi; John F. Kennedy; Martin Luther King Jr. He lived the life only he wished to live and for that should be commended.

George Laks, Bolton’s adopted son, followed a similar route it could be said. Of Polish origin, George fled the invading Germans on 1 September 1939 less than a month after his 20^th birthday. Biking it with his brother to the Soviet-controlled east, he effectively traded Adolf Hitler for Joseph Stalin. A proud Pole, however, George refused Russian citizenship.

The consequences of this intransigence were harsh. Accused of being a spy in a slightly surreal twist to his already dangerous plight, George found himself sentenced to 12 years hard labour in the gulags (Vladivostok and Magadan among others in Siberia).

Serving 18 months of this before being permitted to join the Polish Army, George then worked in Tashkent and Kirkuk before a London delegation invited him and his compatriots in 1942 to join the Polish Air Force in Britain. Initially stationed in Blackpool, he finally made his way to Bolton via RAF Halton as a burgeoning wireless mechanic.

A stint in Italy (1944-46) and demobilization from the air force in 1948 left George free to finally pursue a normal, civilian life. Jobs with Metropolitan-Vickers, Marconi and Kendal Milne & Co (now House of Fraser) gave him a taste of electrical engineering British-style, but this son of a prominent Polish engineer knew he had to start something of his own.

Breightmet Electrics was born in the 1950s. Two decades later it had six shops and around thirty employees. Slot TV was the thing and George was one of its early pioneers. Outside of his professional sphere though, George developed a philanthropic streak and it is for this generosity that many remember him today.

George’s Wood in Ainsworth (planted with the help of fellow Bolton CHA Rambling Club members) was donated to the Woodland Trust. The swish ‘top table’ (Cornilleau 740) – Hilton Table Tennis Centre’s very first quality table – was a gift from George and is the source of much amusement to this day (Jean Smart misspelling his name on the tiny plaque as George Lax).

I think we can safely say that George’s song touched many. He lived ‘til 94 – a ripe, old age (just one year younger than Nelson Mandela). There are fewer and fewer of his generation about, but such vitality – playing table tennis right up until the end (for Hilton, Breightmet Electrics, Heaton) – is an example to us all.

Colin Roberts: “George had a table tennis room purpose-built at the back of his shop. I met his wife, Joyce following the Keogh/Ritson merger in 1968. I have enormous respect for him.”

Alan Bradshaw: “Johnny Leach [Table Tennis World Champion 1949 & 1951] toured RAF Aerodromes during the war challenging all-comers whilst sat down. He soon got off his chair when George started playing.”

Jean Smart: “George would not let me change the plaque. We had many a laugh.”

Derek Weston: “He would often keep staff on when not needed and would famously pop in even when retired.”

Alan Ingerson: “A very quiet and softly spoken man – a decent defensive player.”

George Laks: 2^nd August 1919 – 13^th December 2013

The text arrived at 1.14pm on 4 June 2013. 60-year-old Alan Ingerson, rejuvenated through his brief spell with Division Three, BRASS announced to me that he had signed for Ladybridge ‘B’ in Division One.

Despite BRASS winning the 4^th tier title – in large part, of course, due to the heroics of 96% man, Ingerson – he had decided to walk away. There wasn’t quite the press coverage of a significant football transfer or the fanfare in Ladybridge to welcome the new player. And certainly no stepping off a plane to be greeted by a marching band (just 3.3 miles separate BRASS’ venue, Victoria Hall from the Ladybridge Community Centre). But to the table tennis community – fully aware of their marginalised status – this was a pivotal moment.

Players’ careers at local level can last for 70 years. Ingerson had already put in a 46-year stint and the old sparkle had seemed to return. There had been tantrums, heated moments and snarls as with any relationship but also plenty of mirth and camaraderie. Ingerson had been a par excellence signing for BRASS – an ‘out of contract’ (so to speak) mercurial wonder. His game was different to anything I’d seen before – the south-paw top spin like watching an industrial worker crank a heavy piece of machinery. Returning such balls was little short of impossible given their accentuated kick. Only the canniest of opponents knew how.

Having made his debut on 31 October 2012, he lost two of his initial fifteen matches. To most players returning from a two-season sabbatical such statistics would please them. Ingerson, somewhat traumatised by his ‘black November’, set out to correct and fine tune certain parts of his game; the result being that in his final thirty-three matches he was unbeaten. 46/48 wins – one for each year of effort since he first picked up a bat in 1967.

I have had the privilege of playing alongside many different nationalities – Ethiopian, Zambian, Iranian, French – and when Ingerson approached BRASS with a view to joining the team, I was expecting a fair-haired Scandinavian giant. Instead, we got a follicly-challenged, affable grumbler – one a joy to be around though.

Backroom transfer deals in table tennis are unlikely to be replaced with a transparent electronic system anytime soon, but I bear no ill will. We have lost our ‘Eric Cantona’ like Leeds in 1992, but his sublime presence will not be forgotten.