Installed in a more neutral position, Marine Seijkens, general director of the Francophone Badminton League, puts forward other objectives of this charter: “It is the formalization of an exchange, a sharing of practices and experiences. What we have to gain above all is to have a greater influence in the sporting environment in the Wallonia-Brussels federation, both at the level of the governing bodies and at the level of the press and the visibility that we can have. compared to other team sports disciplines, which are sometimes more publicized or more recognized.”
The French-speaking tennis federation is taking over pickleball…
The loan of equipment, the creation of more regular joint training for executives or help on files will be considered in the future: “We’re talking about a win-win exchange that we can have between us.”
With a strike force of 45,000 members in the Wallonia-Brussels federation, the new club of five will carry more weight in discussions with sponsors, sports infrastructures and the political world. And the fact that two of the five federations are not recognized by Adeps is not a problem in the eyes of Marine Seijkens: “Our missions remain the same, we promote and organize everything necessary for the development of a sporting activity. Being recognized means being subsidized. These padel and pickleball federations struggle more than us. But we have to learn from these federations which, as a result, have a different approach in terms of sponsorship, enthusiasm, etc.”
gull We are not fools.”
By joining forces with AFPadel and the French-speaking Pickleball League, the French-speaking leaders of squash, table tennis and badminton are in a certain way opposing the policy of the French-speaking tennis federation: “We are outside of thatcontinues Marine Seijkens. We have an interest in collaborating with other federations. But we are not fools. We know that the war for the management of padel has been underway for a long time. If AFT had offered us this type of collaboration, it would have posed no problem for us. I think we have the same challenges, but we don’t have the same resources, in the sense that they, being a very large federation, compared to us. They perhaps have less interest than us in collaborating with smaller ones. We know that AFPadel cannot hear about the old AFT. We understand that, but it’s none of our business. Regarding pickleball, according to my information, its leaders were invited by the AFT around the table, they said they weren’t interested in getting together with the AFT, and the AFT, what did it do? She’s taken some of the pickleball into her own.”
In the future, the club of five would not be opposed to enlargement: “We could open up to other federations and perhaps manage to create what we have been talking about for years: a sports center where we could pool on different common aspects.”
