Great advice Ed, thanks for replying.

Unfortunately we have people in the club who seem intent on getting rid of our weak members no matter what we suggest.

I don't actually run the club but as one of the guys who plays at a higher standard I'm always asked my opinion.

I had 2 suggestions, one was to let different people sort out the games each week and get opinions on how each group worked for everyone.

The problem with this was taking some control away from the guy who runs it, the other that 1 or 2 “bad” weeks could result in losing members.

The other, a bit vindictive on my part, was to dedicate one court to coaching anyone who wanted to raise their standard or practise something in particular.

If I suggest this I'm going to make a point of picking faults in the whining members who think they are too good for the rest and the pitfalls are obvious.

Thanks for the advice

Simon

We have 4 “groups” of players.

The first is a mix of purely social, enthusiastic beginners and relatively new players.

Then you have the guys who can play a bit but just want to do some exercise and have some decent games.

The third is the same as above but take it a little more seriously.

These guys are the problem, they think they are good enough to play at the standard of the fourth group and believe they are too good for the first group.

The fourth is a mix of very experienced, ex county/league and current league players. This group all play at other clubs too so we aren't that bothered that every game isn't pushing us and we tend to give advice when asked and help everyone else in the club.

The problem is the third group who will juggle names on the current peg system to make sure they have good good games but at the cost of a lot of mis-matched games for the rest of the guys.

This has lead to people leaving the club and as we have to pay for 4 courts, whether we use them or not, it gets expensive when numbers dwindle and eventually this can only result in the club folding.

I hope this doesn't sound like I'm whining about the problem, I just thought I'd ask in case anyone had a similar problem and found a solution.

I've only been using this site a little while and everyone has been really helpful and there's an absolute wealth of experience here.

My apologies if this is an inappropriate subject and thanks to Ed, we're currently sorting through a way of asking each member their opinions and seeing how we go from there.

Unfortunately the timing couldn't be worse as there's a lot of big football matches on this month and we can't seem to find a night when everyone is able to make it.

Thanks again for taking the time to read this.

Simon