Former world and Paralympic medallist Tom Matthews heads a squad of seven British Para table tennis athletes travelling to Spain for this week’s ITTF World Para Future Costa Brava 2026 (March 26-29).

The Welshman (pictured above), who took bronze in the European Championships last November will be joined by fellow class 1 athlete Nathan Drayner, Bailey Page (men’s class 7), Ryan Henry (men’s class 8), Max Flint (men’s class 10) and two athletes making their international debuts – 21-year-old Thomas Hepburn, winner of the Para Class 1-5 title at the Mark Bates Ltd Senior National Championships last weekend, and 18-year-old Lowri Hurd.

“We’ve got some more experienced Pathway players going to Spain,” said BPTT Pathway Manager Mat Kenny, “who are trying to get their rankings up and show they are going the right way to move up the ladder, and we’ve got some more inexperienced players who are going to find out what the level is like.

“They can then take that home and use it as inspiration to reach the next stage. They’ll get the experience of what they need to produce in international competitions, and they can strive to work on that in the training hall. 

“We’ve also got some new players who are going out for classification and that is really important for us, particularly with Lowri. As another female player she will be really useful for the squad in the future in both singles and doubles.

“The learning opportunities that Nathan is going to get from Tom Matthews are really invaluable. You couldn’t wish for a better person to be out there with than Tom Matthews and he’ll learn a lot.

“Nathan has a really good mental attitude and from his days as a footballer he’s already got a similar mentality to Tom and Rob (Davies) so to be able to feed off that as well will be really good for him. It is as much a learning opportunity for these players as trying to go out there and get results – it is a lot more about learning for the future.”