Veterans Home Nations in Jersey: England Take 7 of 8 Team Golds but Only 4 of 9 Singles Titles

Forty minutes of reversal on table three

The O75 men's singles final ended. Geoff Salter of Scotland lost to Stuart Seaholme of England. Forty minutes later, both men in their mid-seventies stepped up to the next table — Salter holding his bat alongside Johnny Clarke, Seaholme standing across the net with a different partner. The result flipped completely: Salter and Clarke won, taking the O75 men's doubles gold, while Seaholme left the hall with one singles gold and one doubles silver from the same session.

I record this detail before touching the medal table. The official results release from Table Tennis England for the Veterans Home Nations, hosted by Jersey, makes it easy for readers to stop at three lines: England took 7 of 8 team golds, 4 of 9 singles golds, and 6 doubles golds tied to English players. All three ratios are accurate. But they measure three different mechanisms, and merging them into a single story of "dominance" is the first analytical error anyone reading a medal bulletin is likely to make.

The reversal on table three is the smallest and clearest piece of evidence for that claim. The same player, the same day, the same table surface — yet the singles and doubles results moved in opposite directions. If singles results express individual peak, doubles results express something else: pairing chemistry. At veterans level, the second usually matters more than the first.

Context: a tournament entirely outside the WTT points economy

The Veterans Home Nations is a team, singles and doubles competition among the Home Nations — England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Jersey and Guernsey. This edition was hosted by Jersey. It is an age-band event, running from O40 through O75 and beyond, governed by the national federations and sitting completely outside the WTT event pyramid.

What does that mean for a data reader? First, no world ranking points are awarded. No Olympic qualification slot is affected. No meaningful prize money is stated in the release. The event's strength sits at national masters level, not elite international level.

In other words, the entire metric set I would normally use to read a professional table tennis event — game win rates, serve win percentage, third-ball scoring share, a table-tennis equivalent of PPDA, points won from behind — has no input here. The release provides results and podium standings. Not a single line describes tactics; not a single technical stroke is named.

That is a data gap, and I want to state it clearly up front rather than fill it with speculation. When a report carries no technical data, an analyst has two options: stay silent on the technical side, or explicitly flag where they are inferring. I choose the second, and I mark each inference.

So why is a tournament with no points, no prize money and no Olympic path worth dissecting with data? Because it answers a question elite events cannot: how long a sport survives inside the human body. This event has O40, O50, O60, O70 and O75 bands, and still produced gold medallists. That is a fact about competitive longevity, and it deserves to be recorded in numbers.

The current market context makes this detail stand out further. While sports news feeds are flooded with summer transfer rumours — where every headline carries a monetary figure — the Jersey event has no transfer money at all. It runs on different logic: federation entry, age-band placement, relationship-based pairings. And precisely because of that, it is a clean laboratory for testing a few assumptions that elite table tennis does not allow you to test.

The medal table: three ratios, three mechanisms

Start with the raw numbers. Table Tennis England's release states England won 7 of 8 team golds, while the men's and women's singles spread was notably more even: 4 of 9 singles golds went to England. In doubles, 6 golds went to players tied to England, including cross-nation pairings.

Those three ratios are 87.5% in teams, 44.4% in singles, and a doubles figure that resists conversion because of pairing mechanics. I build the table below to separate the three mechanisms:

| Format | England golds | Total golds stated | Ratio | Dominant mechanism | |---|---|---|---|---| | Team | 7 | 8 | 87.5% | Age-band squad depth | | Singles | 4 | 9 | 44.4% | Dispersed individual peaks | | Doubles | 6 | — | Not convertible | Pairing and hand compatibility |

The final column is the most important one, and it is the one a medal bulletin never prints. Teams measure depth. Singles measure peak. Doubles measure compatibility. Those three can coexist inside one federation, but they are not the same thing, and at veterans level they separate more sharply than at junior level.

I have written before that I read a team through thirty variables before listening to a commentator. Here I have only three variables, and I must be clear that three is far too few to conclude anything about overall strength. But three is still enough to reject a wrong conclusion.

The wrong conclusion is: "England dominate Home Nations veterans table tennis." That statement is true at team level, half-true at doubles level, and only moderately true at singles level. If a federation wants to know where it is strong, it must split these three layers apart — and Table Tennis England's release, however honest its numbers, presents them in an order that encourages readers to merge them.

The team layer: where depth is weighed

Eight age-band team events, seven golds for England. I list the English team pairings named in the release to reveal squad structure:

| Age band | English team pairing named | |---|---| | O40 men | Jason Ramage and Andy Wilkinson | | O60 men | Adrian Pilgrim and Griffin | | Another band | Styles and Hurrell | | O70 men | Phil Bowen and Tiplady | | O75 men | Stuart Seaholme and Balding |

What do these pairings have in common? They are two-player teams. Not three, not four. In a two-player team format, one individual's error cannot be covered by squad depth — it must be covered by the quality of the other player. That means each English team gold is the product of two sufficiently strong entries, not ten average ones.

This is the detail I want to stress, because it inverts the usual reading. When people say "England won 7 of 8 team events", the image that appears is a populous federation. But with a two-player format per age band, 7 of 8 actually says the opposite: England had at least two players capable of gold in seven of eight different age bands — evidence of age-band breadth, not of squad size.

I once built a V.League spreadsheet at sixteen, logging every round, and discovered the team with the highest possession share scored the fewest goals. That first dataset had hundreds of errors, but it taught me cleanliness better than any course: an aggregate number always hides an internal structure, and the analyst's job is to open that structure up.

Here, the hidden structure is this. A federation can win team events in two ways: it has two very strong players in each band, or it has one very strong player plus one good enough player in each band. The first is more sustainable. The release does not tell us which England belongs to, because it does not print match scores. That is the first blind spot.

The singles layer: 4 of 9 — and this is the most interesting part

If the team layer is a story about depth, the singles layer is a story about dispersion. Nine singles golds, four to England. The other five went elsewhere, and that list deserves slow reading:

| Singles event | Gold | Federation | |---|---|---| | O40 men | Mariusz Cieminski | Jersey | | O40 women | Laura Horswell | Wales | | O50 men | Jason Ramage | England | | O50 women | Melissa Cheung | Scotland | | O60 men | Brian Jeanes | Wales | | O60 women | Tulay Dundar | England | | O70 men | Phil Bowen | England | | O70 women | Catherine Inverarity | Jersey | | O75 men | Stuart Seaholme | England |

Reading the federation column: England 4, Jersey 2, Wales 2, Scotland 1. Four federations shared nine golds. That is a distribution any tournament organiser would want, because it keeps the event meaningful for many member nations.

But one detail in this table matters more than the rest, and it sits in the dashes between names. In O50 men, the final was an all-English affair: Jason Ramage beat Stephen Horsfield. In O70 men, the final was also all-English: Phil Bowen beat Tiplady. Two all-English finals in two different age bands.

What does this mean for draw analysis? It means that in those two bands, two English players reached the final from opposite halves — either the organisers did not separate same-federation players, or they separated them by a seeding structure we do not have data for. Both possibilities lead to the same outcome: if the two strongest English players in a band both reach the final, that band's gold is guaranteed to England from the semi-final stage onward. That is a form of structural insurance.

In O40 women, Laura Horswell of Wales beat Nicola Duke of England in the final. In O60 men, Brian Jeanes of Wales beat Adrian Pilgrim of England. In O75 men, Stuart Seaholme of England beat Geoff Salter of Scotland. Three cross-nation finals, with results split in favour of the challenger in two cases.

I want to pause here, because this is where data and intuition part ways. Intuition says: the stronger side wins finals. The data here says: Wales won two singles finals against England, Scotland lost one singles final to England — while in team events England dominated 7 of 8. Anyone concluding from the team layer that "England are stronger than Wales and Scotland in every respect" would mispredict three of the four named cross-nation finals.

The correlation between team and singles performance at this event is positive but weak, and it is weak in a systematic way: the higher the age band, the narrower the gap between the leading federation and the rest.

The doubles layer: where borders get blurred

This is the data I want to dissect most carefully, because it contains a governance detail a medal bulletin never explains: cross-nation pairings.

The release states Stephen Horsfield of England partnered Colin Green of Scotland to win O50 men's doubles. In another event, Johnny Clarke partnered Geoff Salter of Scotland in a gold credited to England in O75 doubles. In other words, the same pair on the table can carry two passports, and the gold still lands in England's column.

This creates three analytical issues, which I list by confidence level:

One: the format permits cross-nation pairing

This is a medium-confidence inference, since the existence of these pairs proves the format allows it. In conventional national team events, a player competes under their own federation's flag and cannot pair with another federation in a medal-counting doubles event. Here the rule is relaxed. That relaxation carries an implication: this event places social exchange on par with competitive aims.

Two: the medal-attribution rule is not stated

If an England–Scotland pair wins O50 men's doubles, why is the gold recorded for England? There are at least three plausible hypotheses: the medal is credited to the lead entrant's federation; the medal is credited to both federations and the English release lists only its own portion; or the medal follows the higher-ranked player on the entry list. I choose none of these, because the source lacks the data.

But I raise it because it directly affects how one reads "6 doubles golds for England". If the second hypothesis holds, the figure of 6 double-counts with Scotland, and the true total of doubles golds across the whole event is lower than the sum of national columns. This is the kind of error data people call double labelling, and it is the most common cause of wrong sports standings.

Three: doubles pairing at veterans level is a variable independent of individual skill

This is the conclusion I am most confident in across the entire article, and it comes from the very detail I opened with: Salter lost the O75 singles final to Seaholme, then beat Seaholme in the O75 doubles final in the same session.

If individual skill were the only variable determining results, those two results must share a sign. They have opposite signs. So what is the remaining variable? At 75, movement speed and rotation decline, so most points are decided in the first three strokes of a rally: serve, receive, and third ball. In doubles, each player covers half the table, and the server must serve diagonally into the opponent's court under the rules. That means the receiver's placement ability — and the pair's positional chemistry — determines more than it does in singles.

I must be clear: this is inference, not data. The release prints no game scores, no serve-win points, no rally-level metrics. At the available data level, I can assert only one thing: the singles and doubles results of the same O75 player moved in opposite directions on the same day, and any model ignoring the pairing variable will mispredict at least one of the two results.

Jason Ramage: the profile of the only certain multi-gold player

Across the entire release, one name appears in two different age bands with two golds: Jason Ramage. He won O40 men's team gold with Andy Wilkinson, and O50 men's singles gold, beating Stephen Horsfield in an all-English final.

This is the most important individual fact of the whole event, and it needs reading on three layers.

Layer one: age-band eligibility

A player competing in both O40 and O50 in one event. At veterans events, this is usually explained by a "minimum age" rule — a player old enough for the higher band may be entered in the lower band if organisers permit, or vice versa depending on regulation. I do not hold the rulebook, so this is a medium-confidence inference.

But whatever the rule, the competitive consequence is clear: a player can maximise matches and medals in one tournament by entering multiple bands. That is a feature of the whole veterans system, and it has a side effect organisers rarely calculate: it dilutes the representativeness of each age band, because some O40 golds may belong to someone actually at peak form for O50.

Layer two: the meaning of winning O50 singles

Ramage beat another English player in the O50 singles final. From a federation view, that is the best possible outcome: the gold stays home, and both final slots are internal. From an analytical view, it is a blind spot: we know Ramage is the best among the English O50 group, but we do not know by how much he exceeds the rest of Europe, because both finalists were English.

That is a form of statistical noise I have met in domestic data work: when a federation occupies too many deep-round slots, its results become less informative, not more. Seven of eight team golds is a handsome line on a table, but it does not show how much stronger that federation is — only that it has more people in the inner rounds.

Layer three: age models and the form curve

At an estimated age around 50, a veterans player can still contest two events in one tournament and win both. At 75, the opening detail shows two finals can be played in a single session. That is a fact about competitive endurance at advanced age, and it has reference value for anyone building a grassroots table tennis programme for older adults.

I will not call this scientific evidence, because the sample is one tournament, not a study. But a small sample still has value if we do not inflate it. Three players in this article — Ramage at O50, Bowen at O70, Seaholme at O75 — each won at least one singles event in their band. Three data points do not make a trend. But three data points are enough to reject the proposition that elite table tennis ends at 35.

The O70 and O75 groups: where data thins out

The two highest bands in the release are O70 and O75, and they also carry the lowest data density. I consolidate what is stated:

| Age band | Event | Gold | Note | |---|---|---|---| | O70 men | Singles | Phil Bowen (England) | Beat Tiplady (England) in an all-English final | | O70 men | Doubles | Phil Bowen and Tiplady (England) | The two had met in the singles final | | O70 women | Singles | Catherine Inverarity (Jersey) | — | | O75 men | Singles | Stuart Seaholme (England) | Beat Geoff Salter (Scotland) | | O75 men | Doubles | Johnny Clarke and Geoff Salter | Gold credited to England; Salter is Scottish | | O75 men | Team | Stuart Seaholme and Balding (England) | — |

In O70, there is a structural detail I consider the most elegant in the whole release: Phil Bowen and Tiplady fought each other in the singles final, then paired together to win the doubles. In O75, Geoff Salter lost the singles final to Seaholme, then beat Seaholme in the doubles final with a different partner.

Placed side by side, these two details form a small rule: in the two highest bands of the event, doubles partnerships were not determined by singles results. Someone who just lost to a peer in singles can still be that person's best doubles partner, or can beat that person when a teammate is beside them.

For a data person, this is a reminder about the limits of individual models. Every singles ranking assumes a player's strength is a property of that individual. At veterans level, that assumption wobbles more visibly than at any other level.

I once ran a regression over 500 international matches before the 2026 World Cup and produced a 78% probability that Germany would reach the semi-finals. Germany lost 0-2 to South Korea and finished bottom of Group F with three points. I reviewed all the footage and counted twelve counterattacks leading to goals conceded — the most among eliminated teams. My model was not wrong mathematically. It was wrong because it measured history rather than measuring the fact that Germany's midfield was not running.

The 2026 World Cup taught me one thing: the model did not collapse; I was the one who had believed it absolutely.

When I look at the O70 and O75 tables in Jersey, I see the same type of error waiting to happen. If someone runs a model predicting doubles results from the same players' singles results, that model will mispredict the O75 doubles final. The missing variable here is not a technical metric. It is the partnership relationship — something no statistical table records.

Jersey and Guernsey: home advantage in its purest form

The release shows players from Jersey and Guernsey winning golds across several events: Mariusz Cieminski won O40 men's singles, Catherine Inverarity won O70 women's singles, and Kay Chivers contributed to an O60 women's doubles gold for Guernsey.

For a small island group, three golds across three age bands is a notable result. And it raises a question I once spent two months answering in a completely different setting.

In 2026, when the Bundesliga returned without spectators, I compared 100 pre-pandemic matches with 26 matches played in empty stadiums. Home win rate fell from 43% to 29%, and average goals per match rose from 3.1 to 3.4. My conclusion then was: home advantage is largely created by crowds, not by pitch conditions or travel.

When the Bundesliga played to empty stands, I realised home advantage is just a variable waiting to be deleted.

In Jersey, that variable has not been deleted — it is at its most concentrated. This is a tournament hosted by Jersey, with Jersey players competing at home, sleeping at home, eating at home, and avoiding sea or air travel. Meanwhile delegations from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland all travelled.

In table tennis, the mechanism differs from football. There is no roar of 50,000 spectators. But three other factors exist: familiarity with the hall and its draughts, familiarity with table and floor conditions, and most importantly an undisturbed daily rhythm.

I have no data to quantify these three factors in Jersey. The release states no attendance, no venue, no session schedule. That is another gap. But I can offer a testable hypothesis for the next edition: if Jersey hosts again and again wins singles golds across multiple bands, the home advantage hypothesis gains support. If Jersey hosts and wins no singles gold, the hypothesis is rejected and this edition's three golds were pure individual ability.

That is how I write about variables: state the hypothesis, state the falsification condition, and let the next round of data answer.

Wales and Scotland: the threat at individual level

If I had to rank federations by threat to England's position, I would put Wales and Scotland at the top, and I would put them there for specific reasons rather than a feeling.

Wales has two singles golds: Laura Horswell in O40 women and Brian Jeanes in O60 men. Both were won by beating English opponents in the final — Horswell beat Nicola Duke, Jeanes beat Adrian Pilgrim. Those are two results directly against the leading federation.

Scotland has one singles gold: Melissa Cheung in O50 women. Scotland also had Geoff Salter reach the O75 men's singles final, and contributed to the O60 women's team gold.

Read structurally, a notable pattern appears: Wales is strong at both ends of the age spectrum — O40 and O60. Scotland is strong in O50 women and in the highest band, O75. If this pattern repeats next edition, it would indicate the historical participation waves of each federation: people who took up table tennis at the same time age at the same rate, creating a high-density age cluster.

This is a low-confidence inference, and I want to state why: one tournament is not a trend. But it is a cheap hypothesis to test, requiring only the entry data of three consecutive editions.

What sits behind 7 of 8: three hypotheses and how to separate them

At this point I want to return to the most striking figure and treat it seriously. England's seven of eight team golds can be explained by at least three different hypotheses, each with different implications for the future.

Population and infrastructure hypothesis

England is the most populous nation in the Home Nations group, with the densest club system and the largest number of grassroots events. Under this hypothesis, 7 of 8 is a natural consequence of sample size: more players means a higher probability of having two strong enough players in each age band.

This hypothesis carries high confidence, and it has a clear consequence: if Wales, Scotland or Ireland increase their O40 player base over the next decade, the team gap will narrow — but slowly, because age-band depth is a variable with a long lag.

Junior-system transfer hypothesis

Under this hypothesis, English veterans win not because England has more veterans, but because England had a strong junior development system three decades ago, and those well-trained players have now aged together. If true, this is evidence of an investment that paid back after 20 to 30 years.

This hypothesis carries medium confidence. The release states no player biographies and no club affiliations.

Two-player format hypothesis

Under this hypothesis, the 7 of 8 ratio is partly high because each band needs only two strong players, not a long squad. If the format were four-player teams, England's ratio might be lower. This is medium confidence, and it reminds me that percentages always depend on the denominator — which a medal bulletin never prints.

These three hypotheses are not mutually exclusive. They may each be partly true. The only way to separate them is next-round data: entry counts by age band per federation, win margins in match scores, and the number of reserve players used.

That is why I do not write "England dominate". I write: England won 7 of 8 team events, there are at least three explanations, and we do not yet have enough data to choose one.

The data gap: what the release does not contain

I list here, systematically, everything Table Tennis England's release does not provide. This list is not a complaint. It is a map of what needs collecting if anyone wants to analyse this event seriously next time.

| Category | Data status | Impact on analysis | |---|---|---| | Game-by-game scores | Absent | Cannot measure narrow versus dominant wins | | Serve win rate | Absent | Cannot assess scoring structure | | Matches per player | Absent | Cannot compute physical load | | Draw and seeding | Absent | Cannot analyse bracket difficulty | | Entry counts by federation | Absent | Cannot compute participation-to-medal conversion | | Cross-nation doubles attribution rule | Not stated | Cannot verify total doubles golds | | Equipment, blades, rubbers | Absent | Cannot analyse equipment factors | | Specific play dates | Not stated | Cannot compute match density per day |

This is a long list, and it leads me to one judgement about the nature of the release. A results release without game-by-game scores is a release serving federation members, not performance analysis. That is consistent with the event's position: a federation-level social event, not a fixture inside the elite competitive system.

But precisely for that reason, I have to write this piece differently from how I usually write. There are no advanced metrics to cite. There are no models to run. There are only results, format structure, and a few small patterns clear enough to state.

I once built a V.League dataset with hundreds of errors, and the biggest lesson from it was this: when data is insufficient, the correct move is not to speculate more, but to state clearly where you are speculating.

Counterpoint: four things the medal count does not say

First, gold counts do not measure the skill gap

England won 7 of 8 team golds. But if all seven finals ended 3-2 after five games, the real gap between England and the rest is very small. If all seven ended 3-0, the gap is large. The release does not tell us which, because it prints no scores. This is a classic case of a discrete indicator — gold count — hiding a continuous indicator — margin of victory.

Second, the correlation between team and singles is not causal

There is a natural temptation to read team results as a predictor of singles results. The Jersey data shows that relationship is weak. Wales lost to England at team level but beat England in two singles finals. Scotland lost the O75 singles final to England but won the O75 doubles final against England thanks to another Scottish player. Team structure and singles structure operate on different logic, and using one to infer the other is a reasoning error.

Third, the Jersey and Guernsey presence may be a hosting effect

Three golds across three age bands for two small islands is a good result. It may reflect real ability, or home advantage, or a higher-than-usual share of local entries in this edition. The release does not state that share. This is the third blind spot.

Fourth, and most importantly: the silence on technique

The release contains not a single word about technique. No playing-style descriptions, no serving-tactic notes, no equipment information. For a veterans event, that may be editorially reasonable. But it creates a consequence: any claim that veterans players rely on control play rather than modern two-wing looping is speculation without data support. I raise that hypothesis in the analysis, mark it low-confidence, and use it to conclude nothing.

Data does not need me to believe in it. Data needs me to verify it.

That sounds simple, but it is the boundary between analysis and guesswork. At this event, I held to that principle even when it made my writing less dramatic.

Sustainability risk: O40 is the entry door, and the door needs newcomers

Across the entire release, there is one structure I consider the biggest long-term risk, and it has nothing to do with medal results.

The event runs from O40 to O75 and beyond. The O40 band is the entry door to the whole veterans system. Every player at O50, O60, O70 and O75 today once walked through the O40 door in the past, or entered later if the system permits. If the flow of newcomers into O40 declines over the next decade, the entire structure thins from the bottom up, and the higher bands thin with a lag.

This is a low-confidence inference, because the release gives no entry counts by age band. But it is the kind of risk I have seen at other scales: in grassroots events I follow, age-band structures always carry a ten-to-fifteen-year lag between the number of people playing at 35 and the number competing at 50. A federation can have a decade of veterans success built on long-time players while its intake at 40 quietly declines.

For the Home Nations federations, this is a metric worth tracking more than gold counts. It appears in no news bulletin, because it is not news. It is a curve, and nobody publishes curves.

The Vietnamese context: what a small event in Jersey can teach

I live and work in Hai Phong, and I follow Vietnamese table tennis alongside the international game. The veterans movement in Vietnam has a structural feature that the Jersey event made clearer to me.

In Vietnam, veterans events are usually organised by club, by province, or by broad age group, and most activity rests on local club relationships. The Home Nations event runs a different model: age bands split into five- or ten-year brackets, each national federation sending a team, and an official national medal table published.

That difference produces a data consequence. When an event has national federation structure and an official medal table, it automatically generates data comparable across years. When an event only has club structure, data can still be collected, but it requires someone to do that work proactively, and rarely does anyone.

This is what I think the grassroots table tennis movement in Vietnam could borrow: no need to copy the format, only to standardise how results are recorded. A results table that records age band and federation or club will generate comparable data within five years. A table recording only the winner's name will not.

I know this sounds like a small administrative detail. But it was from a hand-written 26-round V.League spreadsheet at sixteen that I learned: the quality of your conclusions depends on how you recorded data before you knew what you would need.

Signals for the next round

I do not conclude that England will again win 7 of 8 team golds next edition. The sample is one tournament, and one tournament does not make a trend.

What I will track next edition consists of four signals, and I state them with falsification conditions so anyone can check back.

Signal one: England's singles gold ratio. If the 4 of 9 ratio repeats or falls, the pattern of "team depth but dispersed singles peaks" gains support. If England takes 7 of 9 or 8 of 9 singles golds, my conclusion about dispersion is rejected.

Signal two: the number of cross-nation doubles pairs. This edition had at least two cross-nation pairs winning golds credited to England — Horsfield and Green in O50, Clarke and Salter in O75. If next edition has more, that is an integration trend. If next edition has none, this edition was an exception.

Signal three: Jersey and Guernsey singles results. If the two islands continue winning singles golds while hosting, the home advantage hypothesis gains support. If they host without singles gold, this edition's three golds were pure ability.

Signal four: O40 entry counts. This is the most important signal and the hardest to collect. It appears in no medal bulletin, but it determines the shape of the event over the next decade.

The forty-minute reversal on table three in Jersey is the smallest detail of the whole event. It is also the detail that taught me most. A 75-year-old lost a singles final, then forty minutes later won a doubles final against the very man who had just beaten him — raw data cannot explain that, and that is why I still review every match before writing a single line about a percentage.

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Conclusion

A veterans event in Jersey does not change the world rankings, does not create an Olympic slot, and has nothing to do with any transfer deal. It gives us only a small set of results, a medal table with data holes, and a few patterns clear enough to state as hypotheses.

If I had to draw one lesson from this dataset, it is this: the three ratios of 7 of 8, 4 of 9 and 6 doubles golds do not describe the same strength. They describe three different properties of one system, and a system can be strong at one layer while only average at another. If a federation reads the wrong layer, it will prepare wrongly for the next edition — and I think this lesson travels to any table tennis system, including the one I follow in Vietnam.