Over the past few weeks during my various phone calls with local leagues and clubs the common theme in these calls has been ‘our league is concluding for the season’. I hope you all had a good season and thanks to those who have invited me to their end of season presentation evenings soon.

The last few months have been very exciting. The beginning of the year saw lots of staff and a huge team of volunteers spending a lot of time in Manchester running the first WTT event in England. It was a huge challenge putting a table tennis competition inside the confines of a cycling track but we pulled it off and look forward to more WTT events in England soon.

My thanks go out to all those key volunteers from the West Area who spent a week with me up in Manchester.

Over the past few months I am starting to see the items from the Area Plan coming to fruition now. Here are a few of things that have happened recently:

• Technical Officials Academy has started to develop and more on this to come
• A Performance and Development Centre is now in the final stages of planning and will be starting soon
• Nine new TT Kidz kit bags have gone out ready to get the next batch of U11 players started.
• Funding and equipment have gone out to two new groups in Worcestershire and Warwickshire
• A new club in Derbyshire has started and detailed discussion and support has taken place
• A Zoom call has been held for all County Chair and National Councillors and a similar call has been made with League Chairs and Secretaries. Those not in attendance have been sent a recording for information
• Plans for a Women and Girls’ 1star in Wolverhampton

Now activities are moving, it will be time to upscale the delivery of the U11s programme around the area and host more 1star events.