History
Mejlans Bollförening was founded in 1969, but the club's predecessor was TIFG (Tomas Idrottsförening Getingarna), which was founded in early 1961 with the same arrangements and operating conditions that later laid the foundation for MBF. Both clubs were founded by Dan Hedman, who worked as a youth leader at the Swedish-speaking parish Tomas församling at the Meilahti church. TIFG was registered as a table tennis club with the Finnish Table Tennis Association. Hedman was the chairman of TIFG throughout its existence until the club was dissolved in 1971.
The game began in two rooms in the church basement with two new permanent tables. The premises were open every weekday evening. The game quickly became popular, especially among the boys of Meilahti, Töölö and Munkkiniemi. The matches were played almost exclusively in single sets, where the winner was allowed to continue playing and the loser had to queue for the next set.
Some TIFG members soon began to participate in competitions organized by both the association and the Helsinki Table Tennis District. TIFG also rented tables from the Olympic Stadium's table tennis hall, which had 12 fixed tables, as well as changing rooms and showers.
Competitive play quickly became very popular among some members: Leo Juden, Asko Sarkola, Henry Lindgren, Peter “Pede” Eklund, Christer “Chraide” Leidenius and Robert “Robi” Ådahl. Dan Hedman took care of all the formalities (playing shirts with the TIFG logo sewn on the shirt, licenses, competition entries, train and bus travel) admirably. The club also started to organize national competitions in the Stadium table tennis hall from the autumn of 1963.
Hedman himself did not play table tennis. His hobby was photography, which led to many photographs, mainly of church premises. Hedman himself created the TIFG club badge, which was yellow and black like a wasp, referring to the club's name, Getingarna, or "Wasps".
TIFG was for a long time the youngest club in the federation. Young new players clearly dominated the boys (14 years old) and juniors (18 years old) categories in Finland throughout the 1960s. TIFG won the Finnish Championship gold in the 14-year-old category four years in a row from 1962 to 65, and in the 18-year-old category from 1965 to 68, four golds were also won, which were shared between four different players. At that time, table tennis was written about quite often in the daily newspapers, and the young players of TIFG received quite a lot of attention. Among the many competition reports in the daily newspapers, one can mention a long article written by the pseudonym MAILA (Jouko “Jokke” Siitonen) in the Sosialidemokratti magazine on 22.9.1965 September XNUMX.
Titled Young "Herila" players reach the top of table tennis Jokke tells about the success of young talented table tennis players in many competitions.
The new Finnish Championship team competition had just been introduced, and six three-man teams played in the new series. TIFG had managed to join the series with by far the youngest team. The newspaper article included a photo of the TIFG team: Christer Leidenius (15 years old), Robert Ådahl (14) and Peter Eklund (17). The caption also revealed that all the players on the team were under 170 cm tall (!?).
MBF was founded in 1969 (when TIFG still existed) because Dan Hedman wanted to return to the idea that originally created the foundation of TIFG, namely youth activities around table tennis in church premises. MBF had already started its activities when TIFG was dissolved, and a small group of interested people had already started playing actively also in the Ruskeasuo hall, where table tennis began in the fall of 1970.
In the spring of 1977, MBF managed to advance to the Finnish Championship on its own with a team of Peter Eriksson, Thomas Hallbäck and Anders Lundström.
Text: Robert Ådahö / Thomas Hallbäck