CORNWALL CONTRACT BRIDGE ASSOCIATION
Minutes of the 39th Annual General Meeting of the CCBA held at Carnon Downs Village Hall on
Sunday 17 September 2023
Present 28 :
3 committee members – Liz Perry (Chair), Chris Bickerdike (Secretary), David Stone (Treasurer) - plus 25 other members.
Apologies 4 :
John Golding, Ian Marriott, Linda Radford, Chris Kempton
The meeting was opened at 3.55pm during the tea interval of the Mixed Pairs event.
There were no matters arising from the minutes of the last AGM held in October 2022.
Chairperson’s Report
Of the 10 clubs in Cornwall that are EBU affiliated – we lost St. Austell earlier in the year – 9 are currently playing face-to-face and 4 are playing online, i.e. three clubs are playing both. We currently have a total of 278 players in the county with a National Grading Ranking. This is nearly 10% down on this time last year. More people are playing socially online without the need to play duplicate bridge. Travelling, age, ill health, summer traffic, winter cold and rain, dark nights, city parking, climbing stairs, are all mitigating against face-to-face bridge.
At the table, Wendy Williams and Henry Gompertz won the John Perks Pairs. Geoff Smith and Glyn Meredith, who also qualified for the national final – the Corwen Trophy – finished 9th out of 87 in that final.
The A team finished 3rd out of 8 in the Western League, their highest finish for many years. And the C team finished a close 4th, only 7 VPs behind the winners.
I gave notice some time ago that I wish to retire from being Chairperson, but as we could not find a replacement in time for today’s AGM I have agreed to continue for the time being until someone is found, or until next September at the very latest. The three years I was expecting will have turned out to be 7!
Thank you for all the help and support you have given me, especially Chris and David.
Treasurer’s Report
This covered the period 17/8/22 to 14/8/23. As there will be no further Congresses, that account was closed down, with the £3620 being transferred to the main account.
In an attempt to kickstart F2F county events, they were made free to enter. Entry fees for the two online events, where an out-of-county director is employed - were a nominal £5.00 per person. The county levy of 8p per person per club session was stopped in April 2023 and this levy will remain at zero going forward.
A loss on the year of £105 therefore caused an overall surplus of £3515. This meant a bank balance of £9978 will be carried forward.
I anticipate this coming year a shortfall in our income of around £1000. We have, of course, sufficient funds to withstand this at the present time.
Touranament Secretaries Report
David Stone began this report by telling the meeting that the family of Harold Payne – who was well known and loved throughout the county and was County Chairman for three years in the noughties - wished for him to be remembered by naming an event after him. It was decided to name the annual Teams of Four Championship after him, but at a time when we are not presenting and engraving cups any more, the donation of a cup from the family was not felt necessary. David will relay this message back to Harold’s son.
Chris Bickerdike then ran through the programme for the season Sept 2023 to April 2024. This again consists of five events – two online, two F2F, and one – a new venture aimed at attracting more pairs - a “hybrid” event which will consist of a F2F and an online session played simultaneously with the results merged.
There will be no online event open to any members of the EBU (we attracted 56 pairs in September 2022) as the EBU no longer permits counties to run them.
Two clubs – Liskeard and Falmouth – continue to run their own weekend event open to all, and the county openly encourages other clubs to do likewise.
Election of Officers
The following persons were proposed, seconded and re-elected en bloc to serve for the coming year.
Chairperson Liz Perry
Secretary Chris Bickerdike
Treasurer David Stone
Committee Ian Marriott, John Golding
Nothing was raised by the meeting in “Any Other Business” so the meeting was closed at 4.11pm.
CJB 19/9/23