Help wanted: Gladstone Trust centenary Saturday 12th July

Our venue (Kintbury Jubilee Centre) is part of the Gladstone Memorial Recreation Ground and the Trust which runs it is having a centenary celebration and fundraising event on Saturday 12th July. The Jubilee Centre wants to showcase what activities it has to offer and have asked if we can run a table tennis activity as part of this. It is a good opportunity to help the Trust which runs the facilities which we benefit from and also to raise the profile of table tennis in the area. We have asked for enough space to set up one or two tables for the event.

If you are able to help with this or have suggestions for the event, please contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. The event is planned for approximately 11:00-15:00. We took part in a similar event a couple of years ago and generated good interest and at least one regular practice session attendee came from that event.

Thanks.

Toby Atkins - our new Equipment Officer!

The club has been running for over 7 years now and has steadily grown to where we have a flourishing Thursday evening session and increasingly host other table tennis events. It is now at a point where we need to be more organised and share out some of the work which goes into keeping things operating smoothly.

Maintaining all our equipment in good and safe condition is a critically important area, because without our tables, nets, etc. we would not be able to play. We are happy to announce that Toby Atkins has offered (without too much coercion) to be our Equipment Officer. Toby is already captain for a rowdy bunch of Kippers so a big thanks to him for stepping up to help the club. We can all do our bit to make Toby's task a little easier by reporting any issues with equipment or facilities to Toby, otherwise we might not pick up that something needs fixing or replacing. Please don't just put back faulty equipment without reporting it and assume it will get magically sorted.

To help in this, we have set up a specific email address for reporting equipment or facilities issues. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

If you are interested in helping out with the running of the club in any way, no matter how small, please do contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Plans for 2025 and beyond

Plans for 2025 and beyond

Thanks for your participation and support for our weekly Thursday evening session, our sessions have been subscribed to capacity most weeks especially when there are home matches. We want to thank you all for your patience and flexibility during busy periods when you have a wait to get onto a table, and for being accommodating to junior players and new joiners. We want to improve the experience for all if we can, so we are looking into possible ways to do that. These are not definite plans but we want to share the ideas with you and welcome feedback and suggestions.

Additional or extended practice sessions

Currently, there are a couple of available, regular slots at the Jubilee Centre which we could use for additional or extended sessions:

• Tuesday afternoon/evening
• Thursday before our current 7:30pm slot

Being a potential earlier time slot, it might be more convenient for junior players. The other possibility is for a greater emphasis for new players where there is more coaching advice.

One challenge with this will be availability of people to help with running these sessions. For sessions involving junior players, we would either need parent/guardian attendance or a suitably accredited adult to run the session, e.g. a licensed table tennis coach. Any suggestions on how we can organise such sessions are very welcome.

Our current plan is to see if capacity remains an issue after the season finishes. There are 3 home league matches left to be played and no more than one per week, which could help with capacity. There might be cup finals and the Koslowski which we normally host, but there are no dates for these yet. After that, we could try a couple of trial sessions to test feasibility and demand.

Booking Practice Sessions and Match Tables

While our simple, online spreadsheet has served us well for a few years, with more demand and potentially more sessions to organise, it could be too constraining to meet longer term requirements. We are looking to move to an event management and ticketing platform. This would have the benefit of being more secure and robust as well as additional facilities such as automatic wait lists, booking multiple slots with one transaction (e.g. parent and child). To minimise the cost to the club it is likely that we will keep the invoicing and payment of fees separate and as it is now.

We want to move to a new system within the next few weeks. There will be some changes in the booking process but hopefully any change will have long term benefits for all. Again, any comments or questions welcome.

Table Tennis Equipment

Apart from hall hire, the fees that you pay are only used to fund maintenance of the table tennis equipment. Our aim is to provide a high quality environment for playing table tennis for club users, the local table tennis scene and Table Tennis England events. We have just bought 2 new tables, which means we now have 6 Butterfly National League 25 tables. The Sponeta table (which everyone dreads moving) is an NDTTA table which we store and can use as a reserve match quality table. The other (3) older tables are going to new homes where they can help the local table tennis community. With the equipment we now have, we think that we have all that is required to support club and other table tennis activities. If you think that we need any additional equipment, please do let us know.

With Toby getting up to speed as Equipment Officer, we hope to be able to maintain the quality of facilities we enjoy. Please do help and support Toby by looking after all the equipment and making him aware of any issues. The equipment can be expensive to obtain (the price of the tables we just bought are double what we paid for tables a few years ago) and it is all funded by your fees, so it is in all our interests to look after everything.

Thank you….please do let us know your suggestions.

Upcoming events at Kintbury TTC

We are fortunate to enjoy a great venue for playing table tennis which has seen our regular Thursday evening practice and match sessions fully subscribed most weeks. Thanks to everyone for the support, not only in attending but for helping to set up and put away equipment.

It is rewarding that we can share our facilities to host table tennis events which are part of the local and national programme. Events coming up soon include:

• Veterans Inter-County matches on 25th and 26th January;
• Newbury and District Closed Tournament on 8th and 9th March;
• Table Tennis England Aspire series on 30th March. The Aspire Series is a new table tennis tournament designed to provide opportunities for players who don’t typically participate in competitive events.