Fusion Table Tennis Club, Bermondsey: £5 Table Hire

Fusion Table Tennis Club sits in a warehouse at Unit 2, Stockholm Road, London SE16 3LP, and its open practice sessions need no partner: someone is always there to play, and players rotate every half hour. If you would rather play a friend, the club hires out tables for £5 per person for a one-hour session on Tuesday evenings and Thursday evenings. It has been going since 1989, it describes itself as one of the largest table tennis clubs in London and the South East, and it welcomes beginners as readily as league players. The timetable below shows which nights are open practice and which are coaching, so you do not turn up to the wrong one.

The club's home is a large warehouse in South Bermondsey, which it shares with Lewisham Thunder Basketball Club. Each club has its own permanent playing area, while the lounge, offices, meeting room, kitchen, showers and changing rooms are shared. The address on the club's contact page is Fusion Table Tennis Club, Unit 2, Stockholm Road, London SE16 3LP.

Fusion's history is a tour of South London school sports halls. In 1989 two small Dulwich League clubs, Dulwich Grove and Paragan, started coaching at James Allen's Girls School in North Dulwich, first on a balcony with two tables and one or two youngsters. In 2004 the club moved to Harris Girls Academy in Peckham Rye and took the name Fusion, chosen because it described a community club open to every culture, age and ability. In 2009 it moved again, to Knights Academy in Grove Park, where a hall with sixteen tables allowed four sessions a week.

The last move came in April 2014, when the Surrey Canal development offered the club its own premises in South Bermondsey. The New Bermondsey Sports Foundation, funded through the developer Renewal, provides the warehouse rent-free, and the Fusion Table Tennis Centre officially opened in 2014. The club's own history says the move let it set its own hours and play 24/7 if there is demand.

Monday is open practice from 19:30 to 22:00. Tuesday has table hire from 17:30 to 21:30, with group coaching for adult intermediates and beginners from 19:45 to 21:45 running alongside it. Wednesday and Friday are mostly coaching: group sessions for junior intermediate and beginner players from 16:45 to 18:00, then advanced squad practice from 18:15 to 20:15. Thursday has table hire from 17:30 to 19:30 and then open practice from 19:30 to 22:30.

Weekends are the easiest time to drop in. On Saturday, group coaching for juniors runs from 09:00 to 10:30 (adults are welcome too), the advanced squad practises from 10:45 to 12:45, and open practice runs from 13:00 to 19:00. On Sunday, adult group coaching for intermediates and beginners runs from 10:00 to 12:00, and open practice runs from 13:00 to 18:00. The club notes that 22:00 is its standard closing time and that it occasionally extends it by 30 minutes.

Read the timetable before you travel, because the club has nine teams in the Central London League and also hosts open competitions, and fixtures can change the programme. Changes are posted on its social media pages. During school half-terms the weekly junior coaching sessions are replaced by training camps, so a Wednesday or Friday afternoon in half-term will not look like the timetable.

Table hire is the cheapest way in: £5 per person for a one-hour session on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, booked through the club's booking page as an hourly booking where you play your partner uninterrupted. Club sessions on Monday and Thursday from 7.30pm are listed on the booking page at £8, which is the figure to use for an open practice night.

For regulars, the club's membership page lists a General Session membership at £50 per month. The same page lists junior squad memberships from £28 per month for one day a week of beginner and intermediate coaching, rising to £92 per month for four days a week of elite squad training. Adult group coaching, one-to-one coaching and the Sunday intermediate adult coaching club are all bookable services on the same booking system, and payment is online by card or PayPal, or in cash to John on arrival.

The honest judgment: if you only want a casual hit with a friend, the £5 hire slot on Tuesday evening is the better value and the longer window, running from 17:30 to 21:30. If you are on your own, skip table hire and go to an open practice night instead, because the rotation of partners is the whole point of the session.

The open practice format is what makes Fusion different from a pub table. There is no need to bring a partner. The club rotates players every half hour, so a complete beginner can find themselves facing a league player within the hour. The club's own description is that players range from beginner to good and higher, and it is open to women and girls and to men and boys.

You do not have to announce your standard in advance. The club's advice is to come along and knock up with one of the experienced players, who will quickly assess your style and level. That same conversation is a useful moment to ask about your bat: the club holds a small variety of bats to try, and through its relationship with Topspin Sports it stocks bats for sale and can make one up on the spot, with the right rubber for your playing style. That is particularly handy if you are returning to the sport and have no idea which rubber to choose.

The coaching ladder is clear. Beginners are steered towards group sessions that build basic technique, intermediates who keep losing to players they should beat can join intense group coaching or a training camp, and advanced players can join the squad programme that works on tactics and the mental side of match play. Once a year the club takes a team of juniors and adults to a training camp in Slovakia, and the head coach is John Dennison.

Getting there is the one real hurdle. Stockholm Road is in the New Bermondsey regeneration area of South Bermondsey, so check your route to SE16 3LP on a map before setting out, and arrive a little before the session starts so you can find the unit. Bring sports shoes and a drink; the warehouse shares a lounge and a kitchen, and the changing rooms and showers were refurbished along with the toilets.

Table hire and the Monday and Thursday club sessions are the ones most likely to suit a group of friends, and for a Tuesday evening hire you can book on the club's website for the one-hour slots from 17:30. If a league fixture or open competition takes over the tables, the club announces it on its social pages, so a quick look at them on the day is worth the thirty seconds.

There is a fallback if your evening falls on a coaching night rather than an open one: the Saturday open practice runs from 13:00 to 19:00 and the Sunday one from 13:00 to 18:00, which is six hours and five hours of tables respectively. Players of all standards are welcome in both.