THURSDAY evening, seven-fifteen, finds me outside the YMCA in Winton - an unlikely place to be for someone who is neither young nor that confident about his credentials as a Christian.

I'm there because of an advert in a local newsagent's shop window. "Table tennis players wanted," it said, to form a new team for the Bournemouth league, along with a contact phone number.

I rang and got through to a Mr Clarke. "Call me Nobby," he said. I can understand why people called Miller are nicknamed "Dusty" and why a Mr White is a "Chalkie" but quite why a Mr Clarke is a "Nobby" remains a mystery and the informal name always sounds a little rude to me.

I launched into my spiel. "I hear you want table tennis players, Nobby, but the thing is my age. I'm 61 this year and to be honest, I'm not sure if I'm a little too old for the game?"

Nobby was kindness itself and reassured me that he was not only in his seventies, but had also undergone surgery on both a hip and a knee and that hadn't stopped him playing.

At this point, I began to wonder about the wisdom of the whole idea - like someone once said (Groucho Marx, maybe?) I wouldn't want to belong to a club that was prepared to have me, and if players of 70-plus with dodgy hips and knees were considered to be suitable material, perhaps this wasn't quite up to the standard of table tennis I'd been hoping for.

Not that I'm world class or anything, but in my younger days I used to turn out regularly for a team which played reasonably high up in the Southampton league, and didn't disgrace myself too often.

Sometimes, I'd get my name in the paper and I'd also played for my town at youth level, even if I did take an almighty hammering by a spotty teenager from Kidderminster or somewhere similar.

And I used to have a drawer full of cheap and nasty trophies with black plastic bases topped with metal figures of little men wielding a table tennis bat.

Nobby remained encouraging. Come along for a practice on Thursday night, he said, which is why I found myself hanging around outside the YM with a bat, towel and bottle of water, waiting for a bloke who would presumably walk with a limp.

Not a bit of it. Nobby was as fit as they come for an old 'un and wiped me off the table in our first knockabout.

Lesson One learned: A long lay-off plays havoc with your eyes, the speed of your reaction times and your ability to leap about.

Lesson Two: If you've been earning money by spending the entire day cutting hedges in the hot sun, you will tend to be tired by the evening and your arms will ache.

Lesson Three: Rules have changed since the pre-historic days when I used to play regularly.

It's no longer five serves each and the first to 21 is the winner - now, you change serves every two points, which is the very devil to get used to, and the first to 11 takes the game.

Lesson Four: My bat is illegal, I was told. I was a little put out because I'm quite proud of it - I picked it up at a car boot sale, along with two door hinges, for a quid. But nowadays bats must have a red face and a black face. I had the red face but the bat remained blue.

But whatever the shortcomings of my body and my equipment, I was considered suitable to make my debut as a born-again table tennis player in the lowest division of the Bournemouth league.

With any luck, our team will get a mention in the Daily Echo sports pages.

Either that or there will be a brief paragraph in the news columns about an elderly table tennis player taken to hospital in an ambulance, suffering from heat exhaustion.