Hi everyone.

Excitement is building in the lead-up to our biggest event of the year – in fact our biggest event ever! – the 2025 Asian Cup.
The tournament is being held at UltraFootball in Sydney from 17 to 19 October and is open to all CASTFA players,including of course all Australian players. If you haven’t already registered for the tournament, please consider doing so. It promises to be a fantastic weekend of table football in a great venue, and a wonderful opportunity to catch up with old friends from here and overseas.
Apart from assisting tournament organiser/supremo Steve Dettre with preparations for the Asian Cup, the ATFA Committee has been working hard to ensure that our great game continues to prosper and grow here in Australia.  Some areas we have recently focussed on include:

• Player numbers. Without our players, we are nothing! The Committee has been considering options to maintain and grow our playing base. A first step was to get a more accurate idea of how many players are actually playingacross Australia in our various clubs, given that not all players choose to register or to participate in FISTF or WASPA tournaments. A recent stocktake conducted through club leaders shows that we have close to 100 active players across Australia, which is double the number of officially registered players. While it’s great that we have a lot more people playing than are currently registered, we hope that over time a greater proportion of players will decide the register and take part in FISTF and other tournaments around the country, and that we can increase our playing base;
  
  
• Reviewing our calendar of FISTF events. Like all members of FISTF, Australia can hold up to eight FISTF tournaments a year – a Grand Prix, two International Opens and five Satellite tournaments. We have never used our full allocation, but this year we will be holding more tournaments than for several years. The Committee has agreed that each year we will aim to hold all eight permitted events, with the larger events being held in our main playing centres (Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane) for the next little while and, hopefully, Satellite tournaments being held in other cities.  We will have more to say soon about the calendar over the next year or so, so stay tuned!;
  
  
• Revamp of the ATFA website. The ATFA/Subbuteo Australia website is a key communication tool and repository of information about table football in Australia and overseas.  The Committee agreed in July to modernise the website and hopefully you have already noticed the considerable improvements that have already been made by our hard-working team of Adrian Elmer and Beth Eveleigh. While the work continues, I think it already looks great and is much easier to use. This work is ongoing;
  
  
• ATFA Development Fund. As part of our focus on building clubs and player numbers, the Committee is looking at options to create a small pool of money to support the growth of the game, particularly where player numbers are currently low. This could, for example, be through providing funds on a 50/50 basis for purchase of boards and equipment. Currently, our only regular source of revenue is the small ($10) annual membership fee , which on current numbers is only enough to cover our basic costs (FISTF membership, website hosting and ongoing status as an association). The Committee is currently investigating options to obtain grant or sponsorship funding to help us establish the Development Fund. We’ll let you know how we go.
  
  

That’s it for now. Please don’t hesitate to approach me or any of our ATFA Committee if you have any questions, concerns or suggestions as to how we can improve things.
I hope to see many of you at the Asian Cup in October. In the meantime, keep smiling….and keep flicking!

Eliot Kennedy
ATFA President