Nottingham Contract Bridge Association

Minutes of Committee Meeting held on 31^st May 2017

1. Apologies for Absence.

Chris Clarke sent his apologies. Tim Anderson will no longer be on the committee but will continue to help out until he moves or until we train a new county TD.

2. Approval of the Minutes of Last Meeting.

These were approved. However a comment was made about the draft minutes being put on the internet. Whilst the committee wished to be open and transparent in what we do, it was decided that the minutes will not be published on the county web-site until they are approved by the whole committee.

3. Matters Arising.

There were no matters arising.

4. Chairman Report.

John Auld raised the issue about how we engage with players and get more young people playing bridge. John agreed that he would complete the County Survey for the EBU and then send it to the rest of the committee to add comments. The survey needs to be completed by 9^th June.

5. Received correspondence.

It was decided after a vote to decline Keyworth Bridge Club’s request for help to fund their new dealing machine. The reasons put forward were that other clubs in a similar situation which had organised fund raising activities and had also asked for donations from their members. It was also felt that the county had to be fair to all of its clubs. With this in mind, Ian Dovey was asked to design a protocol to be used in future on when to give grants to clubs. John Auld would be writing a draft reply for Clare Batten to amend and send back to Martin Mellor at Keyworth.

6. Provisional Calendar for next year.

Clare was asked to double check the dates and add in dates for committee meetings so they can be published on the web.

7. Teams of 8 .

Chris Clark and Ian Dovey provided costing for this competition. This had been done as a general review before the beginning of the new season. The figures given showed that the league made a slight profit; however once the cost of funding the entry to the Garden Cities Trophy was taken into consideration then a loss was made on this competition.

8. Teams of 4.

There had been a problem in division 2 with one of the teams. They had asked teams to play at their club and asked for the away team to pay table fees. The suitability of their venue was also discussed. It was decided to amend the rules regarding these issues. Keith Spencer would be contacting the teams concerned. Keith Spencer reported that having a second division was working better for the teams who liked a more social game.

9. Treasurer’s Report.

Ian reported that the deposit account had £10,911 and the current had £2,038. There was still an outstanding invoice from Nottingham Bridge Club to pay, together with the entries for the Corwen.

10. County Captains report.

Keith Rodgers stated that he would try and contact people earlier about the team selection. However he said that he could not pick the second or third team players until he knew about the availability of the first team players. Toni Smith had received a report from Ray and Phil on the friendly match with Derby. They said that there seemed to be some confusion over the level of players selected for this match, as Derby had selected some of their second team players. They also said that they were unwilling to travel too far for friendly games. Keith Rodgers welcomed the initiative and said that he would try and arrange some friendly games against the other counties in the league.

11. Events Secretary’s Report

Regarding the Green Point event in July, Graham Brindley announced that he was going to distribute leaflets down at Spondon when the Leicester GP event was on and also when Derby were running their Wednesday night events. He had already received some entries.

12. Visit of Bev Purvis 20^th July.

Toni Smith asked for funding to provide a buffet for this event. This was approved with a cap on the spending of £70. On the same day an EBU trainer was providing training on the new bridge rules.

13. Prize Money for events

Toni proposed that we scrap the idea of prize money for events. However Irene Auld said that people expected prized money and that we would have to be careful about forthcoming events as the advertising did not say that we would not be giving prize money. It was decided to possibly review the concept of not giving prize money in the future, depending on the profitability of an event.

14. EBU Scorer Training

Keith Spencer is to go on the EBU course dealing with this. He will liaise with anyone in the county who needs to use this software. Keith Rodgers will provide a list to Keith Spencer of anyone who needs training on this for county matches.

15. County Directors for Next Year.

The committee agreed that Keith Spencer and Toni Smith should complete the county directors course this year. In future years we should try and get more people trained to this level.

16. Meeting of Strategy Group

Toni went through the strategy group’s findings and asked for support from the committee. The following suggestions were agreed:

1. There would be an annual meeting with club officials once a year in late October with agenda items covering the EBU, association and club matters. Toni to arrange this in liaison with John.
2. Committee members would visit and play in at least one session of bridge at each affiliated club once a year. Clare will draw up a rota.
3. A request would be made to each club to nominate a member to act as club representative to act as a conduit for issues and support.
4. The committee should ensure that it has the correct details of as many players and clubs within the county as possible. There will be a newsletter article requesting people to give details of changes to emails etc.
5. There will be a social event which could be a charity event for all clubs. The timing of this event is to wait until we have the club reps in place.
6. Although the strategy group had brought up the issue of the website, it was felt this was under continual review by the Webmasters (Keith Spencer and John Auld).
7. There was a need to map of clubs and the provision of teaching across Nottinghamshire. Toni asked for a volunteer from the committee to take charge of this, but as no one came forward, this has been put on hold.
8. The suggestion of having a bridge week in Nottinghamshire was felt to be ambitious, but it may work once we have club reps in place. It was agreed to put this on hold until December 2017.
9. It was agreed to try and advertise events better. It was agreed to look again at the motivation for entering competitions and whether prizes are detrimental, or transparent, and consistent. In other words, are they an effective use of funds.
10. The suggestion of a new midweek competition was put on hold for the moment as attendance at the present competition had declined. It was felt that we needed to get clubs to support this and so we needed to wait until the club reps had been sorted.
11. An internal review was suggested. Some members of the committee stated that they did not see an issue with present working practices and that clubs were welcome to send a representative to the meeting at the moment. It was agreed that if the meeting times were published for the year this would help clubs, should they wish to send a representative to county committee meetings.

17. AOB

Ian asked for a copy of the minutes of the AGM, as he had been unable to attend and he wished to know what had happened. The next committee meeting will be Wed 6^th September.