Long-serving Otago coach Martin Duffy picked up a table tennis bat on the long boat ride to Scotland when he was 12 and is still involved in the sport more than 60 years later.
That lifetime involvement has been recognised by, well, life membership.
Table Tennis New Zealand awarded the veteran coach a life membership at their recent annual meeting.
"I don’t think anyone from Otago, that I know of, has been made a life member," Duffy said.
"I suppose it is quite a big deal."
Yes, it is.
Otago Table Tennis Association treasurer Debs King-Newell described Duffy as the "heartbeat of table tennis in Otago".
"He runs all of the squad trainings, provides free coaching every Sunday, oversees the schools’ competition and manages Dunedin’s largest table tennis club," she said.
"He often sets up and packs down the hall himself.
"Martin’s commitment and passion have touched hundreds of players across New Zealand.”
Duffy coached internationally for New Zealand for eight years from the late 1980s through to the mid-1990s.
Perhaps his two most significant coaching assignments were at the 1994 Commonwealth championships in Hyderabad and the world championships in Sweden in 1993.
Duffy also contributed heavily to national senior and junior coaching camps across New Zealand and delivered school visits, promotional activities and coaching workshops.
He served as a TTNZ national selector from 1985 to 1996, and again from 2015 to 2018.
Duffy was also on the TTNZ board from 2013 to 2018, which included a stint as deputy chairman.
Duffy was appointed Otago coach in 1980 and remained in the role until 1995. He returned to the role in 2013.
And since then, he has helped grow the sport.
"[Otago] got as low as 14 interclub teams at one stage, but we’re up to about 28 teams now. So we’ve most probably got more competitive players than tennis, for example, which people probably don’t realise."
The 75-year-old does not play any more, but he still clocks about 15 hours each week coaching the next generation.
Duffy discovered the sport when he was 12 travelling to Scotland with his family on a boat.
"I started playing table tennis on the ship, and then we came back again. Eleven months later, I played table tennis for another six weeks on the ship.
"Then I joined the table tennis club at Macandrew Intermediate School when I got back. So that was 1962."
Duffy made a national training squad in 1972 but travelled overseas in 1973.
He took a break from the sport when Otago Table Tennis sold its facility in the mid 1990s, but has otherwise been a constant presence.
