Sheffield Table Tennis League

DENNIS GREEN completes a 54-year tenure as General Secretary of the Vulcan TT Club.

Dennis Green was born in Attercliffe, Sheffield on 25 August 1930 and was introduced to table tennis in his early teens at the Attercliffe Wesleyan’s Youth Club. In 1954 when Dennis and his friends were deemed too old for membership of the youth club, ten of them met at the Tinsley Hotel to form a club of their own. They each contributed £1.00 to fund the manufacture of a table tennis table, which was produced by the Carbrook Cabinet Makers. From these humble beginnings, Dennis virtually single-handedly turned Vulcan from a fledgling one-team organisation into a thriving 14-team club, which he has managed until recently as General Secretary.
The Vulcan Table Tennis club was established back in the days when teams consisted of FIVE players and in 1956 Dennis volunteered to act as General Secretary. At that time the club headquarters were situated at the Royal Hotel. Soon afterwards, Dennis added to his responsibilities by marrying Jean in 1958, whom he had met at the Brightside & Carbrook Dairy where he was employed as a deliveryman. Their marriage was blessed with the arrival of daughter Beverley, son Martin and finally a second daughter Alison. Martin currently plays for Vulcan in Division Two of the Sheffield League and the family influence continues with Beverley’s son Adam Morton and Alison’s son Grant Kennedy both playing in the league. Dennis E Green is Dennis’ nephew and also represents the club in Division Four of the Sheffield league.
Following a brief spell at the British Oak Hotel, in 1970 Vulcan found a new home in the Old Bradleywell Hotel at Darnall. By 1974 the club had expanded to eight teams and five seasons later, it had grown to twelve teams. In 1980 the club had outgrown the “Bradleywell” and relocated to its present home at the Attercliffe Church, where the fourteen-team set up still plays and Dennis turns out for the occasional match “when a team is a player short”.
In 1992 Dennis retired from the Dairy, leaving him more time to spend on club matters and to serve on the Sheffield league executive committee, which he had joined in 1987. He extended his commitment by joining the “venues committee” in 1990 and took on the role of the knockout cup organiser in 1992, a position he held for 6 years.
The 90’s heralded the highest point of achievement for the Vulcan club as the ‘A’ team took a hat trick of Division One titles from 1994 to 1996. The successful team of that era was built around Andrew Horsfield, Bill Bridgeman, Keith Whittaker, Shaun Bibby and Richard Shirt.
Never happy in the spotlight, Dennis is a quiet and unassuming individual, who still communicates with a playing staff of over 70 members. Now, as he contemplates retirement, Dennis has overseen a name change for the club to VULCAN REDTOOTH, which involves a lucrative shirt sponsorship deal and an injection of cash, from the Derbyshire based company Redtooth Poker, where his son Martin is a director.
He has received the most prestigious honours that can be bestowed on an individual by the Sheffield league committee. In 1978 he was the first recipient of the Norman Lee Jubilee Award for “Club Secretary of the Year”. In 1997 he became the first person to receive the award for a second time. Dennis received the principal accolade given to administrators, workers and volunteers in the Sheffield League, when in 1995 he was presented with the “Arthur Smith Memorial Trophy” for “outstanding service to the league”. This year he received the award for a second time in recognition of fifty-four (54) years as General Secretary of the Vulcan Table Tennis Club, along with the Maurice Goldstein Merit Award from the English Table Tennis Association. At the recently held Vulcan annual general meeting, Dennis accepted an invitation to become President of the club.