Keighley and the lesson for Vietnam table tennis: don't just build halls, build people

Keighley, a small town in West Yorkshire, has no world top-100 table tennis star. No classic matches. No million-pound sponsorships. Yet when Table Tennis England introduced the Keighley Table Tennis Centre, the story quickly went beyond a community club. Located on the second floor of an ordinary office building, the facility hides eight table tennis tables, each individually enclosed by barriers and netting. There is also a kitchen, a refreshment area and a separate classroom. Many would see this as merely infrastructure. To me, it is a model moving in the right direction — and a reminder for table tennis systems that are still investing in stands instead of people. Keighley Table Tennis Centre has a long history of grassroots table tennis, including local leagues, junior development, training camps and coach education. The man in charge is Andy Bray, who spends significant periods working abroad but continues to oversee the centre from afar. When Steve Brunskill, a Table Tennis England Coach Developer, visited, he saw a rare enthusiasm in Andy. He came not to inspect facilities, but to help the club make a people-development plan. The centre has hosted part of a Level 1 / Coaching Assistant course with ten learners from diverse backgrounds. Ten is not a huge number, but it shows that a small club can open its doors and become a place for coach training. The enclosed-table setup is not just a design detail. When eight tables are used at the same time, individual barriers reduce cross-table ball interference and create a more focused environment. This matters in coach education: teachers do not have to shout, and learners are not distracted. The classroom next to the playing area allows theory and practice to take place back-to-back, turning the centre into a regional coach-education hub. One notable item is a planned CPD session on serving, supported by Steve Brunskill and the Coach Development team. Serving is often seen as a basic skill, but it is the real bottleneck at grassroots level. When coaches learn how to teach serve quality and serve return, the whole standard of a local league improves. The decision to dedicate a full CPD session to serving shows that Table Tennis England identifies serving as a key technical area for development. More importantly, from the 2026/27 season Table Tennis England will introduce a coaching membership with a Coach Plus tier offering extra support from the Coach Development team. This is a structural move, not just another membership card. It addresses a classic grassroots problem: coaches are trained and then abandoned. By creating a long-term relationship with coaches, the system is investing in retention — something that cannot be bought with expensive halls. Critics may say Keighley is only a promotional story. There is no data on coaching quality, no match results, no proof that the ten learners will teach many children. I could be wrong. Andy Bray's international travel creates a key-person risk. No funding source is mentioned. The building's exterior reveals nothing, making spontaneous discovery difficult. The Coach Plus plan is not yet operational until 2026/27. Yet the reason this story matters is the reversal it represents. Vietnam often spends billions of dong on arenas but leaves grassroots coach training to personal experience. We buy tables and lights but forget the most important question: who stands in front of a child in the first training session? If that person cannot teach, no beautiful hall will keep the child in sport. Keighley understands that, to keep a child playing table tennis, the adult at the table must create a good experience. The article does not boast about players or titles. It presents Keighley as a place with development potential, not as a champion factory. That is a smart positioning for a grassroots stage. If Keighley succeeds, its newly trained coaches will affect surrounding clubs and create a network that cannot be measured by medals alone. I have seen many shifts from my seat. I am old enough to understand that slow systems will disappear. Table tennis in Asia, especially China, remains the standard of depth. But if we look only at China, we will miss the foundation: a coaching system operating from club level, a process that turns players into teachers. Keighley is doing a small version of that. Vietnam needs this culture of teaching and learning more than another stadium. The question is no longer for England. When will clubs in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City open their doors to Level 1 courses, invite coach developers, organise a CPD session on serving, and support coaches after qualification? Keighley has started. What about Vietnam?