2 November 2016
Held at Brooklands
Present: President D. Hurdwell, Chairman F. Warburton, Secretary R. Kavanagh, Treasurer G. Tonge, and delegates from all teams.
The chairman welcomed all delegates. He thanked the officers and congratulated Quarry Bank who had won the league after being runners-up for the previous five seasons. He mentioned the dress code and suggested that the full rigours of the BCGBA code were unnecessary and the league should tolerate presentable shorts and collarless tops. In response to a question from the floor, this will be discussed at the next committee meeting.
The meeting stood for a few moments in memory of colleagues who had passed away. These included: Peter Burgess (Cringlewood), Stuart Donohue (Bowling Gren), Peter Dodd and Ken Meehan (SW Manchester CC) and Vic Wright (Trinity)
None.
The minutes of the previous AGM had been circulated. They were taken as read and approved. There were no matters arising.
Another difficult season to plan! Carrington Spur resigned at the last AGM, because they wanted to give their women members more opportunities. If only they’d read the AGM agenda. This was offset by United Services joining us, so we again had 15 teams. We were able to split these into two divisions more evenly this year, and decided to run a five-home, five-away competition in both divisions. He was aware that this still means a tendency to play the same few teams, but for Division 2 it was certainly better than in 2015. He was always keen to hear suggestions for how the league might be better organised.
Quarry Bank finally toppled South Manchester Legion for the league title, but continued their “nearly” reputation with runners-up slots in the fives competition and the Pride of Sale. SW Manchester and Chorlton are still the yo-yo teams and are set to swap places again. Last year’s AGM had agreed to women playing in the league. Some teams had taken advantage, but there was no sign of a takeover.
A knock-out competition with seven teams is rather short, so we decided to run a single knock-out across both divisions. This gave us four rounds, but with the conundrum of setting the handicaps. Eight of the matches involved teams across the divisions, and in half of these the Division 1 team had a comfortable win. Another three were closer wins for the higher team. The exception was Sale Cons who had to give a division 1 team a start but won easily. None of the second division teams survived the second round. He thought that if we continued this experiment we needed to be a bit more generous to the second division.
Currently there were no firm news of resignations or new teams, but one current team has its doubts. As before, he thought we’d have to wait a bit for decisions to be made. He would keep you informed.
We had a disappointing 27 entries for the Merit this year - the same as last year.
The Eric Dale got eight entries, but only six turned up. The treasurer and secretary formed a last minute pair to make up the numbers, a good decision for them as it turned out.
Greater Manchester county have their AGM on 10 November. The finances continue to improve under the new treasurer. A worrying trend, in my view, is towards greater strictness in the business of BCGBA cards, and fines for late payments or sending forms in late.
Our pre-season meeting is expected to be on 15 March. He would write to you all before than when we know the final number of teams. If necessary there would be a special meeting to discuss composition. The Brooklands club had stated that there would be a charge for the use of the meeting room. After discussion, it was decided that the meetings should be peripatetic, with the next meeting at SW Manchester CC. [Post meeting note: the Brooklands management agreed to waive the charges after representations from members. However the decision to go to SW Manchester would stand for the next meeting.]
The treasurer reported a small surplus of £45. This was partly because last year’s accounts included engraving for two years, and we were back to normal for this year.
Entries were down in the pairs competition and awards had been reduced accordingly.
The auditor had reviewed and signed the accounts, but did not attend the meeting.
The honoraria were unchanged: treasurer £100, secretary: £200.
To adopt the revised bye-laws and rules as attached.
Proposed by the secretary
The secretary explained that the revisions were intended to align the rules with current practice. The changes were:
The meeting approved these changes.
The existing officers were re-elected en bloc.
The chairman thanked all delegates for attending. The meeting also expressed its thanks to the officers.
The meeting closed at 8.05pm.