Present: chairman F Warburton, secretary R Kavanagh, treasurer G Tonge and delegates from all teams.
The chairman opened the meeting at 7.30 and welcomed all delegates. He commented on the BCGBA’s recent decision to increase club levies, and wondered what they needed all the money for.
Apologies:
None.
Minutes of previous meeting:
The secretary had forgotten to bring the minutes of the 2018 pre-season meeting. There were no matters arising.
Secretary’s report:
He had been expecting to report that there have been no more changes to the composition of the league since Quarry Bank’s resignation, and in particular since the fixtures were done. However the Cringlewood delegate had just announced that they were resigning from the league. This left us with 12 teams and a choice to be made. We could run a single division of 22 weeks (all play all twice), but we would then have to move the Merit to weekends. Or we could continue more or less with the current plan. On a show of hands, it was decided to continue with the current plan.
The season would therefore progress more or less as shown in the fixture cards. This consisted of a one-division programme involving 12 teams. Every team plays all the others once, and four teams a second time. The ones they played twice were taken from the league positions last year, so they should be up against teams of similar strength. All teams have 15 league matches - eight at home and seven away or vice-versa. Apart from a couple of matches brought to the beginning of the season, this is an 18-week season, with teams having three open dates. It was quite a challenge to work this out. Sadly it does sometimes mean that teams have runs of consecutive home or away matches. There would have to be some adjustments to the fixtures on the card; these would be sent to clubs as soon as possible.
The Merit qualifying and final days would be on Wednesday evenings.
The relevant clubs had been issued with invoices from Greater Manchester County. If clubs want to arrange their public liability insurance through Endsleigh, this now had to be done online, with a unique reference for each club. These numbers had been issued to the relevant clubs. However the web site was still offering policies for last year. He suggested clubs did not try to set up their insurance until mid-April, and when you do, to sure that it was offering a policy to run to April 2020.
As planned, the BCGBA had increased its club levy to £30. It would go up again next year, to £35. However, the BCGBA’s plan for a levy per player was defeated for a second time. He did not doubt that they would try again.
He hoped that all clubs have a safeguarding officer in place. If they did not, then the BCGBA has swingeing fines planned for them. It would be interesting to see how this worked out. There was a Greater Manchester county meeting the following Monday, when there may be some news. That was also when he would get county and BCGBA handbooks - just too late to hand out tonight!
Treasurer’s report:
The treasurer reported that all clubs except Cringlewood had paid their flat fees. There was some discussion of the Cringlewood situation. Their resignation should have been received by the AGM. As it was the league had incurred expenses and planned on the basis of their inclusion. It was agreed that we should request Cringlewood to pay the flat fee. Otherwise there was little activity at this time of year.
Any other business:
There was further discussion of BCGBA’s apparently insatiable need for funds. The general opinion was that the national association had little relevance to most of our bowlers. However, breaking away would be difficult whilst most clubs also played in other leagues.
The Chairman closed the meeting at 8.15 pm