Worthing launches Junior Team '1 Star' event: How English table tennis patches a gap at the base of its system

On an autumn evening in Worthing, a coastal town in southern England, head coach Matt Porter stayed behind after junior practice with a persistent question: “What can we do for our boys and the other teams that haven't got into YBCL?” The question did not arise from any defeat at the table, but from a gap buried deep inside English youth table tennis. There, the strongest teams have a national stage, smaller clubs have local leagues, but a tier of young players remains stuck in between — good enough to compete, not qualified to enter the official system. The result of that question is an entirely new event: Worthing Junior Team 1 Star, scheduled for Saturday 10 October. To understand why a small tournament at a local club deserves careful note, one must look at the structure of English youth table tennis run by Table Tennis England. At the top is the Youth British Clubs League (YBCL), the national junior team competition for the strongest teams, played on national weekends with substantial travel costs. Below sit JuniorBCL and CadetBCL — age-band leagues, more localised, less travel, lower cost and more flexible format. JuniorBCL has an entry deadline of Wednesday 16 September; CadetBCL has an entry deadline of Wednesday 28 October. The “1 Star” event Worthing initiated is not part of either tier. It is a supplementary stage, created by the club itself, at the base of the pyramid. What is notable is that it attracts not only Worthing but also Jersey and Guernsey — two Channel Islands outside mainland Britain. Lisa De Poerck of Jersey Table Tennis confirmed her boys' team did not make it into YBCL this year, and she sees in the new event a chance for her boys to gain team match-play. Under the published format, two-player teams compete in a progressive knockout, meaning no team is eliminated after a single loss but continues playing to guarantee maximum matches. The event is supported by Table Tennis England through its events team and the TAP programme, with named contacts Neil Rogers and John Mackey. Looking at the system map, Worthing 1 Star is no random tournament. It fills the exact gap left by YBCL and lower BCL tiers: teams not strong enough for YBCL, or strong but blocked by geography, have no official team match-play throughout the season. This is a point I pay special attention to, because that gap appears in no governing document. What deserves pause is not the tournament itself but the organisational logic behind it. Based on my experience following matches and observing youth development systems, England's three-tier structure — YBCL at the top, JuniorBCL/CadetBCL in the middle, club events at the base — reflects a pattern common in many countries: the top tier is funded to produce results, the middle tier maintained to preserve numbers, and the base left to clubs to manage alone. Worthing 1 Star is evidence that the base still has demand; it is just that no one steps forward to meet it with official budget. The two-player team format, with progressive knockout, carries two notable design decisions. First, choosing two-person teams instead of three or four allows small clubs — those struggling to gather numbers — to still send representatives. This lowers the participation threshold, widening the door for units on the system's margins. Second, progressive knockout inverts the logic of a performance tournament: instead of early elimination to find a champion quickly, it extends matches for every team, shifting the goal from “winning” to “playing”. For a development event, this is the right choice — at this age, minutes played matter more than medals. One detail matters most in the whole story: the event was originated by a club, not ordered by a federation. Table Tennis England did not create a new tier; it only supported an initiative already born at the grassroots. Neil Rogers and John Mackey acted as the green-lighters and infrastructure providers, while Matt Porter asked the question and convened the teams. This co-production model — federation and club working together — has the advantage of low central cost and high local ownership. But it also carries an inherent weakness: when everything depends on a few motivated individuals, the event lasts only as long as those individuals' enthusiasm. A worthwhile comparison with Vietnamese table tennis: we also have an age-band youth system, and also a gap between strong central teams and provincial teams lacking team match-play. The difference is that most supplementary stages in Vietnam come from governing-body directives, while in England the initiative arises from a coach staying behind after practice asking: “What can we do?” I do not seek stars — I seek how people light that star, and here the flame is lit from below. It would be easy to read this story as simple good news: a decent club opens a tournament for kids. But a closer look exposes an uncomfortable paradox. A country with developed table tennis and a full national competition system still lets a group of young players slip outside team competition. The solution to that gap comes from local goodwill, not national budget. When such spontaneous events become the main fix, people may unknowingly cover a larger problem: whether the federation has enough resources to serve the base, or is quietly shifting the burden onto clubs. Another side must be faced squarely. Young players from Jersey or Guernsey attend the new event not because they are weak, but because they are far away. This is a geographic problem disguised as a skill problem. A localised event solves travel, but it does not answer a more fundamental question: how can a child on a distant island have the same competitive chance as a child in central England. Youth academies do not produce players — they preserve the unfinished manuscripts of a generation, and such manuscripts are completed only when there are enough stages to write on. The first matches in Worthing will take place on Saturday 10 October, with a few teams, a few games, and very few spectators. The question I leave is not whether the event succeeds, but whether after Matt Porter and Lisa De Poerck step down, someone else will stay behind after practice to ask the same question. The deepest layer of soil usually tells the truest story, but few will go down with me. And sometimes all that is needed is a table, two young players, and one adult willing to stay behind.