Club History
Founder Members
Eddie Stidson, Kay Reading, Ken Bayford, Ken Jefferies, Peter Atkinson, Ray ?
Club Name
Why Firefly?
The name was chosen to basically describe the players form & fitness. Put simply the players started off flying around, all guns blazing, only to tire & burnout before the end of the evening. Hence the name Firefly.
General History
The club was initially started as the Tadley Tigers, purely as a social venture, attached to the Scouts. Later the founder members, were looking for more competitive play & went off on their own, forming Firefly, where they remained playing in the Tadley Scout Den.

Initially the club wasn't allowed to enter league competition, due to a ruling on the minimum number of club members. When they did mange to in 1974 in Div. 5, the low ceiling of the Scout den was an advantage.

By accident the club entered into the Berkshire COUNTY League, rather than the Berkshire District League & were shown up for what they were, casual players wanting a basic level of competition.

Later the club moved from the scout hut to Burghfield, when they were kicked out by the Scouts, for know longer having any of the scouts as members.

Under Construction

1984 on:
These days our Club is still a small friendly social club, of approximately 20 members, most of whom are looking for some competitive play, as were the founders. Although run as a social Club, you will find us still very competitive.

We play at the Hurst Leisure Centre, Baughurst, all year round on three courts using Synthetic Yonex Shuttles.

For the past 10 years we have run three teams, two within the Basingstoke League and the other in the Newbury League. The Basingstoke League consists of a Men's & Mixed team, whilst the Newbury League team started out as Mixed and now has changed to Men's for the 1999/2000 season. Sadly after the 2007 season, and many years of struggle, we have had to drop the Basingstoke Mixed team, due to lack of lapy players.

The Basingstoke teams are the main focus of the Club. Due to the Club's size it is not sensible for us to enter two teams within the same section (i.e. two Men's teams). This is because the players would very quickly become team tied and would then be unable to help the other team out, when they are short of players. So a few years ago to give more of the other club members an opportunity to play competitively, we decided to enter a team into the Newbury League.
Basingstoke League:
From the earliest league history I have managed to obtain, the Mixed team won division 5 in the 1984/1985 season. After many years of promotion & relegation battles, this feat only managed to be repeated during the 2001/2002 season.

The Men's team also had success in their first season, 1990/1991, winning division 5 and then the following year backed this up by winning division 4 as well. The same success hasn't been witnessed since, although the team has now been playing in division 2 for 5 seasons, after being promoted in runners-up spots.

With the Mixed team possibly also gaining promotion to division 2 in the 2003/2004 season, some of the clubs elevated position has to be put down to the slowly dwindling league structure and therefore the lesser competition. However our teams have still had to perform to a level in order to gain the promotion spots and then maintain that new found height.

This team was disbanded after the 2007/2008 season.
Newbury League:
At first we entered a Mixed team as the club had a fairly even split between Ladies & Men. In their first year they became Champions of Division 6. As the years went on the team was run with more & more difficulty, often using the Basingstoke team members. This was mainly due to the dwindling number of ladies at the club through injury, retirement, relocation, etc.... The team ran for a further 5 seasons and in that time they managed to gain one more trophy as runners-up in Division 4 during the 1996 season.

The Mixed team was disbanded at the end of the 1998/1999 season from division 4 and were re-entered as a Men's team in division 3. In their first season the team, with the aid of Chris Nunne & Gary Leach on the last game of the club's last match of the season, managed to snatch the runners-up spot from Aldermaston & Shaw C and gained promotion to division 2. How the team managed it, no one knows !!!

After a few years the team managed to win division 3, with new match secretary Colin Crockford at the helm, and have so far remained in division 2.



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