LTA Padel Performance Manager Matt Stanforth has left his position after just 18 months to take up a role in finance.
Having been served as Head of Performance at Table Tennis England for 14 years, Stanforth says leaving high-level sport will enable him to spend more time at home with wife Ana Silva, the nine-time Portugal table tennis champion.
“I’m looking to travel much less,” Stanforth told The Padel Paper. “I have travelled a lot for sport over the last 25 years. This is the first time in a long time that I can pack my suitcase away.
“It is incredibly exciting and has allowed me to experience so many things which I will always be grateful for, but now I want to have more time at home.”
During Stanforth’s tenure at the LTA, he began optimising performance conditions for GB’s players: setting up training bases in Alicante (for the men) and Barcelona (for the women), sorting funding for players and coaches, accompanying players at tournaments and shaping bespoke support packages around each athlete.
Although bringing someone in from table tennis with no padel background drew criticism in some quarters, Stanforth has been well and truly bitten by the padel bug. He is – and will remain – a regular player at Surge Padel near his home in Harrogate as he builds a new career supporting the development of IT teams in the finance sector.
The timing of his departure is awkward for the governing body in the middle of a crucial year, with the European Championships in Sardinia coming up at the end of July, the World Championships (should GB qualify) in Qatar in late October and the GB junior squads named only last week following recent trials.
Following Stanforth’s departure, the LTA’s Head of Padel, Tom Murray, has invited applications for a new, wider Padel Manager role working across performance and working with commercial operators and the private padel sector “in order to support sustainable growth in padel.”
Murray said: “The Padel Manager will play a leading role in the delivery of key strategic initiatives across both development and performance areas to help grow and diversify the player base, and to create a pathway and support framework that identifies, develops, and supports performance players at each age and stage of the pathway.”
The LTA are seeking candidates who are “a passionate individual and a self-starter with the ability to both lead and collaborate with others to deliver results across both the development and performance areas of padel, with a strong project and stakeholder management skillset [who] is seeking an opportunity where they feel valued and can be a true ambassador of a growing sport.”
