Three Health Warnings: A. This is not an Update Report on Board Business as much of that is dealing with issues which are at either a confidential stage or in development phases; B. All comments are my own, derived from Sporting experience and the current TTI Board position; C. The Blog is intended to inform, stimulate discussion and create an greater sense of TTI unity.
ADVOCACY – Table Tennis needs to have influence at many levels and the role of the Board is to both take a lead in advocating what is good about its Sport and also in explaining how TTI could make best use of Schemes, Finance and Advice/Help. Recent and planned meetings with Sport Ireland (SI) and Coaching Ireland (CI) are just a part of this Advocacy role.
ACCOUNTABILITY – Officials and volunteers in every organisation need to be accountable to those they represent, and this applies at every level – in Table Tennis, the Board and its committees, the Branch Executives and their Committees, as well as Staff, Coaches, Officials and Volunteers all have differing but vital accountability roles; sometimes this involves taking informed decisions based on responses and experience, but always with the users and affiliated members in mind – 2 (of many) pressing Board issues are the staging of international Men’s Euro League matches against San Marino (Feb) and Lithuania (March) and the possible trial re-structuring of the Inter-Pro Championships (April).
APPLICATION – This covers many matters – Why give attention to High Performance? What is the right Female Sports Development? Do we need more or less tournaments? How to ensure that Players enjoy their experience of competition outside their own local comfort zone? All of these 4 challenges, and more, are being addressed by the Board …. but it is certain that the greatly improved HP profile has done TTI a lot of good in the eyes of ITTF, ETTU, SI and more – thanks to Conn Higgins (HP Director), John Murphy (HP Coach) and Teams!
3 A’s for your consideration – comments to me at [email protected].