CTTC 2011 AGM MINUTES |
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CHATHAM TABLE TENNIS CLUB Annual General Meeting 2011
Held on Tuesday 19 th July 2011 At the Howard TT Centre
MINUTES
Present: Bernie Winter (Chairman/Secretary) Tony Carlton (Treasurer) John Kemp (Senior Coach) John Martindill (Club Captain) Dennis Harrington (Catering Officer) Roger Chipperfield (Assistant Coach) Chris Clark, Steve Wadey, Carole Weddell, John Parry and 18 club members.
5/6. Chairman’s/Secretary’s Annual Report: “You will recall that last year you re-elected me as the Club Chairman but at that same meeting we failed to appoint a new Club Secretary. Subsequently, I have been filling both posts since and this evening I need to combine both reports. Hopefully, as part of tonight’s agenda, you will approve proposals that will relieve me of one of those posts. One of the conditions I established when taking on that combined role was to further delegate the multiple tasks that are necessary in administering a Club of this size and maintaining our ETTA status as a “Premier” Club that holds the prestigious Sport England “ClubMark” – the only TT Club in Medway to have achieved that standard. My Committee were asked to accept responsibility for various areas of administration that I had, previously carried out alone and each of those individuals were issued with “Job Descriptions” that outlined what was expected of them. With just a few exceptions, that action succeeded and I would like to thank them for their help in lessening my workload. Those Job Roles over the past year fell into the following categories: Club Treasurer: Tony Carlton Senior Coach: John Kemp Membership and Registration Secretary: John Parry Catering Officer: Dennis Harrington Parent Representative: Carol Weddell Club Captain: John Martindill Junior Representative: Joel Shopland Assistant Coach: Roger Chipperfield And myself as The Chairman and Club Secretary Jeff Cooper and Tony Carlton undertook the 2 “non-executive” roles of Club President and Vice President respectively. Under Item 9 on tonight’s agenda, there will be some changes proposed to the personnel that fill those roles. No doubt, those of you that have access to the Internet will be aware of the uncertainty as to the future of the Medway League when it was announced earlier in the year that the Chairman, Steve Bannister, the Secretary, Martin Harris and the Treasurer, Craig Bartholomew would not be seeking re-election. I immediately contacted the Sittingbourne League in case we needed to affiliate with them in order to preserve competitive League play and their League Secretary said they would be delighted to accommodate us. However, thankfully, the MTTTL will continue and 3 individuals have been elected to take on those responsibilities. They are Graham French (Chairman) Ron Osborne (Secretary) and Ian Gordon (Treasurer) Since then, Sittingbourne have approached us with an invitation to submit teams to also play in their League as well as the MTTTL. For many reasons (mostly financial and administrational) it is unlikely that we will be able to accept that invitation but it will be discussed by my committee. This evening’s Annual General Meeting will also need to make some essential changes to Membership, Practice Night and League Playing fees and, following my report our Treasurer will explain these changes and the reasons for them in his report to members. It is sufficient for me to say, at this point, that “historically” our sport has been “too cheap” and, alongside all other forms of financing, we, as a Club, will need to introduce an austerity programme in order to survive. On a lighter note, the past season resulted in some very satisfactory league performances. Our Premier side “Ark Royal” finished in 10 th position under the captaincy of Dave Macaulay and were 16 points clear of relegation. I think it is worth a round of applause for the fact that Dave alone contributed over one third of his team’s total points! “Belfast” at one point, looked in with a chance of a promotion position in Division 1 but just missed out to finish 4 th. An outstanding season by “Cumberland” saw them land both the division 1 title and the division 1 doubles and become the first Chatham side to win the Charles Stampe trophy to become the most successful side in the Club’s history. “Dorset” in division 2 finished safely in 7 th and 5 th in the doubles competition. “Endurance” battled their way to 9 th in Div 3 whilst “Furious did exceptionally well to finish 3 rd. “Gannet” whilst only managing 9 th in that division did better in their doubles games to end up 3 rd. Our 4 th string side in that division, “Hector” knew that they would be up against it from their previous struggles in the 4 th division and that proved to be the case in their gallant attempts to accumulate a total of just 17 points. We concentrated many of our promising juniors in Div 4 where “Invincible” finished 3 rd, “Javelin” were runners-up and “Kinross” although finishing last showed signs of improvement towards the end. For this coming season, we have a Team Selection sub-committee consisting of John Martindill, Dennis Harrington, Roger Chipperfield and John Kemp and they will be considering the team line-ups over the next few weeks. For operational reasons that will become clearer after tonight’s meeting, we intend to reduce our number of teams to just 8. The league have decided that there will be no division 4 this season and our Chief Coach will outline his ideas for accommodating junior players in separate, outside of the league events. Finally, I would like to announce that the ever-popular “Penny Summers Handicap Tournament” which is a CTTC members-only competition will be held on SUNDAY 21 st AUGUST. Further details of limited entries will be announced shortly.” On conclusion of this report its acceptance was proposed by Tony Carlton and seconded by Dennis Harrington. The Chairman invited questions but there were none. 7. Treasurer’s report: TC explained that the detailed financial summary submitted at tonight’s meeting was not able to show the customary comparison with the previous year’s figures (for which he was not responsible) but he would seek to draw the meeting’s attention to the most important points shown. These included the income from club night fees and the rental monies paid to the Howard Centre and donations raised from sponsors. He specifically wanted to thank Chris Clark for his work in recruiting those sponsors. Taking all those figures into account, we actually made a small loss on the year. He invited any questions on those points so far. There were none so he continued to state changes to the Club’s Practice night fees. The Howard School have decided to raise our rental by 50% and subsequently it will be necessary to increase Practice Night fees for all 3 categories by 50 pence. These new fees will be immediately applicable commencing this coming Friday 22 nd July 2011, adults will pay £3.50, Senior Citizens £3.00 and Juniors £2.50 per session. He reiterated the Chairman’s earlier comment that TT had always been “cheap” in comparison with other forms of sport and entertainment and remains so. Moving on to the league playing fees for the new season. Our Chairman has been able to strike a deal with the MTTTL that enables our 8 teams to be numbered accordingly in the fixture key which means that we can play alternate weeks home and away. In other words, for example, week 1 all 8 teams are at home and week 2 they are all playing away. This means that we will make a massive saving in order to offset the rental increases that the Howard School have imposed. Without that arrangement we would have been looking at having to increase league playing fees to an extortionate sum. Taking into account the CST requiring some extra Tuesdays, we estimate that we will be able to book approximately 15 or so Tuesdays instead of 26 plus as before. The ETTA have also increased the Individual Registration fees (now £6 for adults and £3 for juniors) and, rather than paying these fees via the league, players will be required to pay the club and we will then forward those sums to the ETTA. Alternatively, players can, if they wish, deal directly with the ETTA or via any other club or league in which they may also play. These new figures mean that the 2011/2012 league-playing fees (including ETTA registration and CTTC annual membership) will be £56 for adults and £36 for Juniors. This is, in fact a reduction in what you paid last year! There was a question from the floor (“What was the Howard School’s justification for the rental increase?) TC quoted from their letter of notification “due to the increase in utilities i.e electricity etc., The Treasurer’s report was unanimously accepted.
“Another successful year for our club. I am pleased Junior players were part of that success. Congratulations to those players involved in promotion to the Premier,2 nd and 3 rd divisions. Our youngsters continue to be recognised by the ETTA and at County level. Ben Foster won the Kent School’s U11 tournament. Evie Foster, Mason and Regan O’Neil representing Medway won the South and South East ETTA National Cadet League against strong opposition. James and Rhys Townsend, Charlie Cook and Danny Trotter competed in the National Junior League and enjoyed the experience of meeting rather tough opposition. The players competing in the Cadet team also attended the ETTA Junior Training Squad through out the season and, along with Ben Foster and Ben Towers, were invited to a recent ETTA South and SE Assessment where they demonstrated their ability and dominated the top tables in the match play assessment. We need to look to the future where it is proposed we have a Junior League consisting of two-player teams designed to reduce playing times and eliminate late nights. CTTC will continue to concentrate on development of our Juniors table tennis skills. Along with Claire Moore I intend to invite schools to enter pupils in a series of “Introductory Taster Sessions” in preparation for the Medway Mini Youth Games and Kent Schools’ competitions and at the same time invite those pupils to join our Medway Junior Clubs. I wish to thank our Committee and helpers for their diligent work in running the Club and a special thank you to those parents who have given much time and support to their children in their table tennis development. Finally I wish Joel Shopland every success in his new venture in life and his studies at University.” Following a unanimous acceptance of John Kemp’s report, the Chairman added that we should think ourselves very fortunate in having a totally dedicated Coach in John. His efforts in promoting junior development go far beyond what we witness in the Club on Fridays. He plays a major part here on Saturday mornings and at various junior events around the county.
The Chairman announced that 3 of last year’s committee would not be standing for re-election. They are John Parry (who did a superb job last year in coping with the ETTA Individual Registration “maze”) for personal reasons. Carole Weddell who has been a Parent Representative and Joel Shopland who represented our Juniors (shortly due to go on to university). All 3 rec’d a round of applause when then Chairman presented each with a token gift for their efforts. He went on to explain that it had become a club priority to appoint a new Secretary and he had approached Chris Clark. In gaining acceptance of that very important post (effectively the Club’s Chief Executive) he had assured Chris that he would not be “chucked in at the deep end” and he would gradually introduce him to the requirements and duties involved during the next season. He formally proposed that we elect Chris Clark as Club Secretary and this was seconded by John Parry and a show of hands indicated unanimously in favour. Chris was then invited to join the existing executive committee members on the top table. The Chairman then continued to make two further proposals for election, Ron Wood and Neil Foster as Parent Representatives and these were both unanimously approved. Finally, he asked for the meeting to re-elect himself as Chairman, Tony Carlton as Treasurer, John Kemp as Senior Coach, John Martindill as Club Captain, Dennis Harrington as Catering Officer, Roger Chipperfield as Assistant Coach and Steve Wadey as Registrations Secretary. All were re-elected unopposed. Note Items 10 and 11. had been dealt with earlier.
ADULT PLAYER OF THE YEAR
I had no doubts in selecting my choice of Adult Player of the Year. Not only did he top the averages in his division but, through his captaincy, led his team to a superb treble by winning the Divisional table, the Divisional Doubles competition and the Charles Stampe Trophy. I refer, of course, to STUART FRITTER
JUNIOR PLAYER OF THE YEAR
This young man was rescued by us after he spent a fruitless first season with the Walderslade Vikings who failed to recognise his potential and gave him no encouragement whatsoever. A few years ago, his older brother showed that same potential but, unfortunately, lost interest following a bad accident. I feel sure that my choice for Junior Player of the Year will continue to progress and climb up the divisions and I am proud to present this award to CHARLIE COOK
MOST PROMISING JUNIOR OF THE YEAR
Since the 2010/2011 season ended, I have had the opportunity to work several times with this young player and have been pleasantly surprised with the obvious improvement to his game and I am sure he will improve even further in the forthcoming season. If only we could convince him to change his grip to which I will demonstrate when I “shake his hand” as I present this trophy to JULIAN BARKER The Chairman also presented our two “Cumberland juniors, Sean Weddell and Shaun Gutridge with their medals as a resultof winning the division 1 title and division 1 doubles.
Tony Carlton drew the meeting’s attention to our website CTTC.CO.UK and that, this season he wanted to include our teams’ results but would require team captains to keep him up-to-date. The Chairman added that it was disappointing that more members fail to regularly log on to the site and encouraged them to do so more often. A question from the floor as to what will happen to last year’s div 4 players? The Chairman stated that virtually all of our last years players will be accommodated into one of the new 4 divs. It will mean that some teams will have 5 registered players. A further question on the website was raised regarding links to the Medway site…there has always been a link, also there are many other web sites which bear a link to CTTC. Finally, our newly elected Club Secretary raised the issue of Club Sponsorship. He had managed to gain sponsorship by 4 companies who were, in exchange, offering discount to CTTC members. There being no further business, the Chairman closed the meeting at approximately 9.00pm. Date of next AGM - TBA
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