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NCBA Committee Meeting

The next County Committee Meeting will be held,
Wednesday 6 March 2024 at 5 pm via ZOOM.

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Release 2.19q
2020 AGM minutes

  

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

Saturday 27 September 2020

5 pm via Zoom

Minutes – 19 members attending

MG opened the meeting and explained that he had stepped in as interim Chairman following the resignation of Toni Smith during the year. MG wanted to formally note his thanks to Toni for the work she had done

  1. Apologies for Absence  

Apologies for absence had been received from Rosemary Gunn

 

  1. Minutes of the AGM held on 8 May 2019 These were approved by the meeting. 
  2. Chair’s Report  

MG noted that the period could effectively be split in two: pre-covid and post-covid and that he was only Chair for the last few months.  

Pre-covid:  

MG thought that NCBA had a good 12 months to March  

MG noted that the county teams selection process had changed during the year moving to a selection committee consisting of team captains being MG, Pravin Tailor and Sue McIntosh. MG thought that this was successful and with willing volunteers, it would be continued to the next year. MG also noted that there were debriefs after home matches.  

44 people played for the county last year and Sue and Pravin also organised practice matches for  aspiring players.  

MG noted that the league had not technically finished, with one match still outstanding. IN terms of results, the first team were 6th, the third team were 3rd and the second team were 1st – which is the first time in recent memory that a Notts team have been in first place at the end of the season.  

County teams was one of the more visible aspects of NCBA, but by no means the only one. Other notable events/achievements included:  

    • Festival of Bridge – this consisted of a masterclass, green point event Priday Cup, Notts sim pairs and a TD session. This was over a week, with the aim of getting a bit of buzz around bridge in the county. This was largely successful and the aim was to do it again this year, but Covid got in the way.
    • Two blue point events were held which were popular and provided an introduction to competitive bridge. MG particularly thanked Keith Spencer for organising these and all the work he does running events
    • Graham Brindley ran improver sessions
    • Team of 8 league ran by Jane Hall who provided a separate report. 255 players took part, which is about a third of the players
    • Club conference – this was just before Covid hit, so a lot of what was discussed became moot in the short term. It was however good to have dialogue between the clubs and the county and that is something MG wanted to see continue (maybe in different forms). The output from that will be on the website.

One of the key points MG wanted to make is that the events the county put on were not just for the ‘elite’ (whatever that means). NCBA is on a journey to be a lot more inclusive and the above reflects this, although there is still more to do.

Post-covid NCBA has not been visible enough. The exception being the Keith who has helped people get online and ran the Wednesday drives. However, around the county it is much better due to clubs with 43% of the people playing in Jan/Feb playing July – which is better than the national average. MG offered his praise for the work of the clubs.

MG thanked the committee. He noted that several have chosen to step down for various reasons, so it will be a lean team next year. MG picked out a couple of people who had not been mentioned so far, being Clare Batten who had stepped down as secretary and did a phenomenal amount of work in that role. IN addition, MG mentioned Graham Brindley who had been in on the committee for many years and had done huge amounts for the county association in that time.

 

  1. Treasurer’s Report and Submission of Accounts to 31st March 2020  

Ian Dovey, the NCBA treasurer, started by highlighting the key roles that Graham Brindley and Keith Spencer were to bringing in revenue to the county with c£5.5k being brought in through events they have run.  

ID thanked David Beaumont for being independent examiner and checking the accounts.  

There was a question around insurance (or lack of it). Clare Batten confirmed that the trophies were not insured, but public liability insurance was provided by the EBU.  

There was a question around why the accounts were ‘unaudited.’ MG and ID explained that ‘audit’ was a technical term for a specific process which is required for businesses above a certain size. Instead of a an audit we have the accounts independently examined.  

The accounts were approved. 

 

  1. Appointment of independent examiner  

It was agreed that Dave Beaumont would be asked to be independent examiner again (with one abstention).  

One question was whether NCBA should use the same independent examiner as Nottingham Bridge Club. ID said that there should be no conflict of interest as the examiner is Independent (and signs as such) and their role was to examine the records – it doesn’t have a judgement element.  

It is intended to move more towards electronic records in the future.  

There was a question around the rate of interest on the Scottish Widows account being not very high. MG commented that it was difficult to get a good rate of interest and for the effort involved to try and find a higher rate of interest would not be worth it.

 

  1. Universal membership fee  

The meeting then discussed the county component of the universal membership table fee.  It was the recommendation of the committee that it should reduce from 4p to 0p for one year. This is due to the financial state of NCBA and the fact that clubs may need the money more when Covid comes back.  

There was a question on whether if we did not charge a UMS fee the money would go elsewhere. MG said that the money would instead stay with the clubs. He commented that when face to face bridge returned, there may be financial pressures on clubs due to (initially) low attendance and normal costs.  

The 0p rate was agreed by the meeting.

 

  1. Election of Officers  

No vote was needed as there had not been two candidates standing for the main committee posts.  

The committee will be:  

                President:                     

                Chair:                           Mark Goddard
                Hon Treasurer:           Ian Dovey
                Hon Secretary:     
                County TD                   Keith Spencer
                County Captain:          Mark Goddard

            Other committee members

                                                    Shirley Ashtari
                                                    Chris Frost
                                                    Brian Brooks
                                                    Mel Shepherd

 

  1. Election of EBU shareholders  

Keith Spencer and Sue Wright were elected EBU shareholders  

 

  1. Event Winners and Presentation of Prizes The following winners were announced. a. Teams of Eight League
      1. Division 1

                                                Winners:         Nottingham Gambit

                                                Runners Up:    Retford A

 

      1. Division 2

                                                Winners:          Nottingham A

                                                Runners Up:    Woodborough A

 

      1. Division 3

                                                Winners:          Keyworth B

                                                Runners Up:    Nottingham B

 

    1. Summer Teams of Four League

                         Winners:        Palookas

    1. Mixed Pairs

                                               Jane Hall and Richard Page

    1. Journal Cup

                                               Mark Goddard and Patrick Gaudart. 

    1. KO Teams of Four

                                               Sandy Fulton, John Rolph, Stan Zygadlo, Lloyd Eagling, John and Irene Auld

 

    1. Priday Cup

                                                Dave Nattrass and Robert Bernard.

    1. Robin Hood Trophy

                                               Janusz Adamowicz and Roman Gembecki

 

  1. Date of next AGM

15 May 2021

 

The meeting finished and there was an informal discussions around:

 

    1. Use of funds
    2. EBU mission statement and what NCBA should look like

            It was noted that NCBA had funds in the bank which were to be used for the county’s aim.

A question was around the formation of a budget to use the funds. MG noted that there was significant uncertainty and as such a budget had not been prepared

There was a question around grants for clubs. MG noted that this has been done in the past and could be done again in the future. MG noted that there were likely to be financial pressures on clubs when they reopen and NCBA was open to providing grants to clubs who need it. Another option was an interest-free loan.

A question was around prize money for county competitions. MG noted that prize money was previously offered and was funded out of entry fees. The decision was taken to stop prize money in order to reduce entry fees to encourage more people to take part. MG was sceptical around the attractiveness of cash prizes below a certain level, but there may be non-monetary prizes may be an option.

It was noted that on grants, the County needs to improve communications. Yorkshire had recently asked for grants for new technology and gave help to 7 clubs.

It was noted that we need to recruit more bridge players in Nottinghamshire (and non-affiliated clubs), and advertising etc could be helpful. MG noted that there was a manpower issue and we would need people willing to take that forward

Online teaching was discussed and it was noted that beginners classes were not easy in the Covid environment. This is an area that clubs will look at, but there was a lack of teachers

It was felt that the key roles of the EBU should be to support the teaching, recruitment and development of bridge, support the clubs and promote the game of bridge.

It was felt that more effort should be made around unaffiliated clubs, albeit that requires manpower.

It was noted that Retford are looking at moving to RealBridge and that may be the way forward for online bridge.