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The Southern Region Tchoukball Association (SRTBA)
In 1979 Keith Page started teaching at King Richards School in Paulsgrove and introduced Tchoukball into Portsmouth. Keith had been shown the game by a student at Kings School Gloucester who had been shown the game by John Andrews. John Andrews had brought the game of Tchoukball to Britain in the early 1970s after meeting Dr Herman Brandt (the inventor of Tchoukball) in Switzerland.
When Keith joined King Richard’s school he showed Graeme Young the game and both teachers started teaching it at King Richards School. In 1982 Graeme Young started to teach at St Luke’s School in Southsea, he brought the game with him and Tchoukball started to spread in Portsmouth. The SRTBA league was founded in 1984, the brainchild of Graeme Young and Keith Page. The idea of the league was for every team to play a home and away fixture against everyone in their league in a full 45 minute game this was the only league of it type in the UK at the time and has no other league has done this since.
1984 to 1989: Graeme Young was chairman of the SRTBA during these years.
1986: Keith Page leaves King Richard School and moves to Cowplain School taking Tchoukball with him. With a lot of hard work form Graeme Young and Keith Page Tchoukball quickly grows in Portsmouth and Cowplain.
1986/87: The season saw the SRTBA introduce a separate ladies leagues for the first time, by the start of the 1987/88 season the SRTBA had 14 men’s teams and 11 ladies teams spread over two divisions, this season also saw Cowplain Tchoukball Club enter the league for the first time. Sadly from this peek of 25 clubs the SRTBA started to reduce in size over the following years. Graeme Young moved to Flegg High School in Martham near Great Yarmouth in 1989 where he still teaching Tchoukball today and joined Steve Morris in the Eastern Region Tchoukball Association (ERTBA).
1989 to 1992: Keith Page was chairman of the SRTBA during these years.
Jan Hardacre took over from Graeme Young teaching Tchoukball at St Luke’s school. Cowplain Tchoukball club expanded rapidly, at one point Cowplain had 10 different teams competing in the SRTBA leagues.
In this period the SRTBA reached it’s highest ever standards of Tchoukball, with some teams still together from the early years of the SRTBA, the league become very competitive, with many exciting and tense games. The dominance of the SRTBA over other regions at this stage showed in 1990 when 24 of 30 Great Britain men players were registered SRTBA players. In 1992 Keith Page decided to take a step away from competitive league Tchoukball to concentrate on developing Tchoukball at Cowplain School. This also saw many Cowplain teams leave the SRTBA to play in a Cowplain league.
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