Northern Flight Badminton Club

Club Nights

Club Nights: Time and Venue

Club and match nights take place on Tuesday evenings, 8-10 p.m., at a brand new venue:

Levenshulme Health and Fitness Centre

Levenshulme High School, Crossley Road, Manchester, M19 1FS

(Click here for a map of the area)

We have 4 courts, which will all be available for social play on most club nights. On a few club nights during the league season, however, two of the courts may be used for local league matches.

We use feather shuttles at all levels, and we have adopted the new 21 scoring system.

If you’re coming along for the first time, please contact us in advance if possible. If you're not able to contact us first, then just turn up and ask for us at reception. Initially, you will pay a visitor's fee of £5 per session. After three sessions as a visitor, subject to ability, you will be invited to join the club under the annual membership fee (see below).

Pegboard System

In order to ensure appropriate and challenging games for all at club nights, we use the colour-coded pegboard system wherever possible. Everyone in the club is assigned to one of four ‘groups’, roughly equivalent to international tournament grading:

BLUE: ‘A’ Players

ORANGE: ‘B+’ Players

YELLOW: ‘B-’ Players

[GREEN: ‘C’ Players *]

[* it should be noted, however, that we will typically not be able to accommodate additional 'C' players]

When it is your turn to pick a game, you should choose three other players (ideally from the next six in the list) from either the same level as yourself, one level below or one level above. For example, if your sticker is yellow (B-), you can pick from orange (B+), yellow (B-) and green (C). Ladies are graded on the most suitable 'men’s doubles' level. For games of mixed and ladies doubles, ladies can pick whomever they feel is appropriate from any level.

Membership Fees

In order to cover the cost of our many overheads, especially court time and feather shuttles, we usually ask members to pay an annual membership fee as follows:

Annual Membership Fee from July 2007 - July 2008: £120

This is payable either in one lump sum or in two, half-yearly sums of £70 and £50 respectively. Once this is paid, you will not pay anything else for the year (except match fees if you are playing in local league matches).

But we have also sought to be flexible in our approach to take into account the needs of our various members. As such, there are two exceptions to the rule above:

i) If you are a student, and are therefore only likely to be around during the summer months, you can come down to club night and pay a reduced fee of £3 per session;

ii) If you play your regular badminton elsewhere, with the result that you are likely to come down to club night less than once a month, you can just pay the visitor's fee of £5 per session.