Despite struggling to find a balance between his work as a chef and his passion for table tennis, Brooker said he was excited to take on a leadership role for the championships.

“It’s been pretty difficult recently, I’ve found it hard to put in the amount of training hours I used to, but I’ve been building it back up in the past few weeks,” Brooker said.

The No. 1 ranked player for the Albury Wodonga Table Tennis Association said he harboured ambitions of taking his game beyond the table.

“Getting into some coaching is something I’d like to do, and is definitely something I’ve thought about for a while,” he said.

“I get to step up at the championships and get a bit of a taste of captaining the side, so we’ll see how it goes.”