Good International Performances by New Zealanders

Karen Li was the stand-out player in a series of good New Zealand performances. She won the Women’s Singles gold medal at the Oceania Championships, beating Australia’s best and qualifying to represent Oceania at the Women’s World Cup. She competed at the Melbourne Commonwealth Games and with Annie Yang came close to taking the bronze medal in the Women’s Doubles. The NZ pair had led 2-0 in the 3rd/4th bronze medal match only to fall victim to a strong come-back from their Australian opponents. Karen and Annie had earlier qualified for the semi-finals with a spectacular win over an Indian pair in the quarter-finals.

In the junior domain Phillip Xiao and Jenny Hung both qualified for the World Cadet Challenge and the NZ Junior Girls team qualified for the World Junior Championships.

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Death of Barry Butler

A dedicated New Zealand and South Canterbury administrator, coach and player was lost with the passing of Barry Butler on 19 January. (Photo - Barry - as member South Island team 1989)

He represented South Canterbury as a player for 35 years and coached juniors for much of this period. He led a fundraising and building project for a 12 table stadium in Timaru. He organized and managed three New Zealand championships hosted by South Canterbury.
At national level he served terms as President, Vice-President, National Councillor and National Director of Coaching. He managed New Zealand teams at overseas events on eight occasions.

A long-term Life Member of Table Tennis South Canterbury, he was made a Life Member of TTNZ in 1998.

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World Teams Championships – Bremen, Germany

A young women’s team of Annie Yang, Sophie Shu, Sarah Ho and Hanna Squire earned promotion from 3rd division to 2nd division by reaching the final of their 24 team division. Their final ranking was 50th – up from 55. The men’s team (Brad Chen, Peter Craven and Adrian Soh) were already in 2nd division and finished with a ranking of 46.

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Junior Girls Again Compete at World Junior Championships

For the second year in succession the New Zealand girls team (Jenny Hung, Sophie Shu, Hanna Squire, Jiani Hu) qualified for the World Junior Championships, held in Cairo, Egypt in December. In the qualification event in June they had to beat arch-rivals Australia which they did convincingly, 3-0.

In Cairo they faced Canada, Chinese-Taipei and Romania in group play. They were outclassed by Romania but competitive against the other two. Their first post-section opponent was Brazil, with all three matches lost only narrowly – a good performance. The team then proceeded to improve their world placing from 15th in 2005 to 13th by beating both Tunisia and Venezuela 3-0.

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Clothing Sponsorship

Clothing manufacturer Stag began supplying free clothing for New Zealand teams at test matches and overseas events. This arrangement replaced a previous sponsorship by Nittaku.

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Large Increase in Grants

Thanks largely to the initiative of CEO Mike Loftus, TTNZ’s income from grants increased from $195,754 in 2005 to $309,466. The increase was due entirely to funding received from a large number of Trust funds, many targeted for specific projects. SPARC funding remained unchanged from 2005.

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New Software

Two new software packages were introduced.
Online Player Management System whereby associations manage their membership of players, and
Expand2Play - a spreadsheet application written in NZ to control tournaments.

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