We have ground to catch up – but I see it as an opportunity – Matt Stanforth in his role as Padel Performance Manager

Stanforth manages our high performance players and the support they receive from the LTA, develops a player pathway for the sport and manages national teams to create opportunities across a range of categories.

We sat down with Matt to see his path to padel, what drew him to this opportunity and his vision for the future of padel as one of Britain’s emerging sports.

“My previous sport was table tennis, that’s what I played – I joined the coaching side when I was around 18/19 years old. I then started to pursue it more as a career and went on to work for Table Tennis England in 2008 as a Regional Coach in the North East before progressing to National Coach and National Pathway.

After stepping into his more recent role as England’s head of performance, Stanforth led the England table tennis teams at last summer’s Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, followed by the European Championships in Munich – but what made him switch to padel?

“My wife is Portuguese, so I saw how big padel had become in Portugal and I had so many people saying ‘you have to try padel.'” I would get really addicted as soon as I played and I just wanted to play again.

“I saw this job assignment, and it was a unique opportunity to get involved in a sport that is still in its infancy. In terms of performance, although we’ve had representation at the World Cup, we haven’t had any kind of formal structure – so it’s rare to go into a sport where it’s very much a blank slate. With the expansion of the sport and the opportunity it brings, it was an attractive opportunity and I am honored to be the Padel Performance Manager.

Despite the sport gaining momentum in the UK, there is still work to be done in developing the professional game, with the likes of Sweden, the Netherlands and Belgium making significant progress.

“Compared to the rest of Europe, we can afford to catch up – that could be seen as a negative, but I see it as an opportunity – because we’re so early in our development, it shows that we have a lot of room for growth.

“There are now more pitches available in the UK, so as the infrastructure grows, so do the opportunities to play. Another thing we’re doing in the performance program is trying to get a foothold in Spain as well, so when the players are ready to take that step, we’ll have something there to give them exposure in the leading country of sports..”

“For youth players, a more national program will be considered at first, and at the same time we will consider where there are potential performance training centers that can be created to support the development of the players. The first step is to understand the landscape, what activity is currently happening, and then we can decide how we can build the path in a way that allows for organic growth and the continuous development of the sport.

All growing sports come with their challenges, and we asked Stanforth what difficulties he expects to face along the way.

“I think the biggest challenge is access to legal proceedings. I visited the club recently and the pitches are full all the time which is fantastic. But if you start looking at things from the perspective of talent identification and development, the challenge is how to get time on the field and how to find and develop players. We have to be able to compete with the likes of Spain, France and Italy, so we have to find the right players and give them time on the pitch to develop.

“Another challenge is getting more coaches and increasing that workforce. There are many places looking to gain more experience and skills in padel and Jo Ward and the LTA coaching team are doing a huge amount of work to start running coaching courses. I think it’s important to recognize that padel is so new, and that’s why it takes a little time to set up and install these different features.”

We recently announced the dates for the confirmed FIP Padel and Grade 1 British Tour events to be held in Britain this year. In the first event, the padel stars headed to Surge Padel in Harrogate on the 17th-19th. February and it was Stanforth’s first live padel event experience.

“It was great! I’ve met all the GB players now – I’d met them online so it was great to meet them face to face. But the best thing was seeing them in action – how they handle different situations, how they perform; obviously I’m not a padel player so understanding the game and the nuances with the tactical aspects has given me great insight.

“The biggest thing that impressed me is on the field everyone competed hard, but the camaraderie when everyone came off the field and the social element was just amazing. It was a great race and hopefully we can build on that so that the Tour of Britain is also a highlight of the domestic calendar.

“It was really great to see the number of female competitors at the event – I think there were 18 couples in total, which was more than double the number of participants from previous years.”

With the success of the Harrogate event and more international padel events coming to the UK, the events are impacting growing participation both professionally and grassroots across the country.

“These events offer many different things – firstly it gives our GB players the opportunity to compete in an international event at home, allowing them to develop and improve their ranking profile, which is absolutely key to unlocking other opportunities.

“Hopefully it will start to attract more players from overseas so we can really start to see what the standard is and what it looks like – it will then create a showcase for the sport. I have followed FIP events and World Padel Events online, but seeing it in person is a completely different feeling. It’s inspiring for me to show the clubs and the wider padel community what a high level of the sport looks like.