The Fylde Private Clubs Snooker League

Annual General Meeting 2009 – Monday July 27th

AGENDA

1. Apologies for absence

2. Minutes of AGM 2008

3. Secretary’s address

4. Election of officers

5. Sponsorship

6. Prize distribution & night out issues

7. Security issues on website & email

8. Handbooks

9. Handicapping

10. New team applications

11. Shape of divisions

12. Vets issues & handicapping

13. Financial statement

14. Website issues

15. Honoraria

16. Deadlines

17. Trophies

18. A O B

Welcome

The Secretary welcomed everyone to the meeting and announced that it had been another very good season with plenty of good close finishes in the divisions.

Apologies for absence

An apology came from FCC

There were no other apologies and all clubs were represented apart from:

Comrades

Crescent

Minutes of AGM 2008

A copy of last years minutes was available and agreed to be an accurate record of that meeting

Secretary’s address

The Secretary again reiterated that it had been a very enjoyable season. However, the Secretary reported that it had been a season with considerable difficulties and incidents and asked the meeting to indulge him whilst he read the following statement:

Dear delegates and fellow snooker players

 We do have a lot to discuss this evening but before we get into discussing some of the problems and issues of last season, I would appreciate it if you would kindly allow me to read to you the following statement and after it I will gladly answer any questions you may have.

Last season was probably my most difficult since I started, and the events that unfolded made me seriously consider for the first time since I was elected, whether in fact I should continue to put up with the hassle and stress and verbal abuse that now seems to come with the job. The job is certainly not an easy one, in fact the number of hours I spend each week is in no way reflected in the honorarium I receive, having said that I have to add that I enjoy what I do and feel rewarded with its successes, so it is more of a labour of love than a chore. But no one knows the extent to which it takes over your personal life. So to last season, there were a number of problems and disputes to sort out but the main factor was in fact the actions of one or possibly a small group of individuals who set out to disrupt our League. I will discuss in more detail later some of the stuff that he or they orchestrated but for the moment I would just like us to reflect on how far we have come. Many of you will remember the bad old days but also there will be a number of you who have only joined the League in recent years and have therefore no knowledge of what the League was like before I took over.  Having played in the League for over 30 years I was dismayed to see the state it had got into, which is why I stepped in to take the job on. That was back in 2002. So what was it like back then? Well it was like this. We had no fixtures at the start of the season – no handbooks – no rules – no discipline – no score sheets – no system to prevent ‘bandit’ players being introduced – no money – no decent prizes – no league tables – no sponsors of the league or competitions – no singles competition – no website – no proper system of result reporting – no means of checking if players were playing off their correct handicaps. We have come a long way since those bad old days and I am pleased to say that we now have a great League that we can be proud of. But unfortunately , even though on the face of it everything is now  so much better, there are still those who are not happy. Success in any walk of life seems to attract jealousy these days. I am proud to take the credit for turning this League around, but it has not been easy. It has been necessary to change peoples perception of how things are run and get them into good habits of result reporting as the whole thing relies on that. One of the main gripes of our friend who wanted you all to join a ‘breakaway league’ was that teams were constantly being robbed of hard earned points by my system of penalising teams who failed to enter their results. My reply to that is quite simply this: for the website to display up to date results and tables all captains have to enter their results. It has been proved time and time again that there are a number of captains who, without the threat of points deduction will not bother putting their results in. However, to see how well this is now working you only need to look at last seasons final tables. Not a single Tue team in either division had a points deduction. On Thursdays only one 2^nd division team had points deducted on just one occasion. And there were just two deductions in the Vets league. That is an incredible achievement when you consider that over the course of the season there were over 800 games, that means over 1600 result entries by captains on to the website! Finally I would add that this is the system that we all voted for, and to my critics I would say, for the 1000^th time, I only carry out the wishes of all member clubs by administering the rules that we have all agreed. We have a totally democratic system where anyone can if they wish write into the League with their proposals to change any rule that they do not agree with. Where I have had to make a tough decision on an issue that the rules don’t cover or are unclear then the person or club affected by that decision have the right of appeal to an appeals committee and still further to an EGM if necessary. But as usual I have received no written proposals prior to the AGM so as usual the people concerned want to moan and bleat about things but are not prepared to take some active part in the running of the League by coming forward with some constructive criticism.

Now assuming you wish me to carry on, I will be entering my 8^th season.  I still feel that I have a lot to give, that there are ways that I can improve the League still further. There will no doubt come a time when I will decide to call it a day and let someone else have all the hassle! But the way to do that would mean finding a suitable successor at one AGM and then grooming them for a season to ensure that they were fully conversant with the way the League is run and in a position to take over the following year.  Maybe the person who caused all the disruption is here tonight to propose himself for the job? I very much doubt it.

Before we move onto the main agenda of this meeting let me just complete the picture for those who don’t know the extent to which the breakaway man has gone to. Firstly as I’m sure you all know he canvassed all teams early in the season to ask them to consider joining a breakaway league. Why? Because he felt that I was some kind of dictator who was making the rules up, which of course was totally untrue. He said he wanted a return to the good old days when teams did not face the constant threat of points deductions. He seemed to be proposing a league where there were no rules, and everyone would be much happier! He went to great lengths to criticise me and the way the League was currently run. He suggested that all teams who were also unhappy should contact him with the aim of forming a breakaway league. He received as far as I can see very little support, one of the biggest problems was that he was not prepared to reveal his identity so no one had any belief in him at all. I did get a few teams to write to him pretending support in an effort to find out who he was but to no avail. The League Chairman also wrote to him and offered to call a meeting and discuss his grievances etc but he wrote back saying have a meeting by all means but I won’t be there. Again he refused to reveal his identity. As you know following on from this, as I was more than a little upset by it all, I wrote to all captains and delegates asking for a vote of confidence. I am pleased to say that almost all wrote back with their total backing for the way I had been running the League. There were just a couple of clubs in Cleveleys that failed to reply. As you will see from the next stage, Cleveleys does seem to be the source of the ‘rebellion’. After that everything went quiet for a while, then the next event was that everyone got emailed again, this time it said take a look at our new website for the breakaway league. He had gone to the trouble and expense of setting up a website with a title almost identical to ours. This was merely a forum site where visitors were invited to register and then express their views about the current state of our league and of course my own performance as league secretary. After an initial flurry of interest and a few comments both pro and anti our League, it all went very quiet, in fact there has been nothing said on there by anyone since last January. However it is interesting to note that on there his new breakaway league is called the Cleveleys and Fylde Private Clubs Snooker League. Further proof that, as I have suspected, the source of all this is indeed Cleveleys. We have four Cleveleys clubs who are members of this League and at various times I have had run ins with all but one of them. I also have some history with two of them as I lived in Cleveleys for a number of years, and played snooker for them so perhaps all this is just personal, who knows? The following events certainly made it seem that way. The next act of disruption was for someone, I think we can safely say it was the breakaway man, to try to get me into trouble with the DWP. As some of you will know I have an incurable condition that I don’t publicly talk about, that means that I am in receipt of certain disability benefits, and his next move was to try to jeopardise my position by informing them that I was ‘employed’ by the League. Needless to say he wasted his time as the amount I receive after allowable expenses is within the guidelines of what I am allowed to earn. Finally his next trick and by far the most serious, was to hijack our website. Very few of you will have noticed that, near to the end of the season, the website went down. When you attempted to access the site instead of the usual welcome page there was a blank screen and in the top left hand corner it read: say yes to the breakaway league. I have it on good authority that someone has to be very clever to be able to break into a website in that way. However, he underestimated our collective abilities because thanks to my assistant Peter Hamer from The Club we had the website back online within 24 hours. Now you can see what I have had to put up with last season and why the job is being made so much more difficult than it needs to be by this malicious individual or group who seem intent on disrupting and ruining our League. I am still no nearer knowing who is involved although I have a short list of possible candidates but nothing more. I think it is most likely that this person or small group is acting as a maverick and that the club he represents probably knows nothing at all about his activities. All I can say is we all need to be vigilant and keep alert because one of these days he may just slip up and someone may discover who he is. He has gone to such great lengths to disrupt our League yet is not prepared to come to this meeting where his voice could be heard and his issues addressed.  However, I suspect we have not heard the last of him.......If anyone has any comments or questions on this??

There followed some discussion about the events outlined by the Secretary in his speech and many delegates were shocked and taken aback on hearing of the stuff that had gone on last season. One delegate said he would look into whether or not these events would now be classed as criminal acts. It was agreed by all that as we had no idea where these problems originated we had no choice but to ignore them and carry on.

Election of officers

Not surprisingly there were no nominations for any of the positions held by the officers of the League

Sponsorship

The Secretary outlined the details of last seasons sponsorship deal with CDK Leisure. The deal which we had been very pleased to negotiate was worth £1000 pa to the League over a 3 year period. CDK Leisure own the Tank amongst other venues in the area and it was through them that the deal was arranged. It had been agreed that they could pay four instalments of £250. However, after one such payment there was no more forthcoming and the Secretary told the meeting that he had spent hours and hours of his own time chasing them for the money. He also advised that at some point during the season CDK Leisure had ceased to exist as they had declared themselves bankrupt and continued trading under another name. They continued to run the Tank. But none of this was advised to the League. We had already been made aware of many problems at the Tank on match nights, and there had been a number of complaints from visiting captains. The Secretary had spoken to the manager of the Tank on more than one occasion but overall had not put too much pressure on them because of the lucrative deal that we had with them for the sponsorship. The Tank had two teams last season but one of them had already decided to move to another club because of the problems there. That just left the ‘problem’ team that had been involved in a few disputes and had often struggled to raise a team. They made it clear that they wished to remain in the League but the Secretary had warned them that this was very unlikely whilst their parent company owed the League so much money. They tried to argue, and sent in a letter to support that, that it was wrong to penalise the club as the deal was with CDK Leisure and not them. However, the delegates overwhelming opinion was that the club owners and the club were one and the same, so the liability was as much down to the club as to its owners. Therefore, the club were due for expulsion under rule 10, which states: any club owing league fees or any other monies to the League must have paid said monies within 14 days of the teams first game. There was in fact no need to vote on the issue as the club were clearly in breach of the League rules but a vote was in fact taken and it was a unanimous decision, only the delegate from the Highbury (ex the Tank) decided to abstain from the vote.

Fairer prize distribution and night out issues

A number of people have criticised the prize distribution, in particular the high break prizes, saying that the prize money was going to the same players each year. This was something that had been noted during the season and the Secretary outlined a plan to change the system of high break prizes. His proposal was to introduce a ‘sliding scale’ where break prizes will be achievable by all. So players at the top end ie on big minuses will now need to achieve a  break of something like 75-80 in order to win a prize. There will be 4 ‘brackets’ of handicap groups with the group with much higher handicaps able to earn a break with perhaps as little as a 25 break. This new system will not only be fairer and enable all levels of players to attain some kind of prize but also it should save the League money as it is not anticipated that the payout will be as great. This was voted on and agreed unanimously as a step in the right direction and a big improvement on the old system.

With regard to the night out, there had been a few problems with the prize payout. Envelopes containing prize money was handed to captains for their team players, however it is always hard to check on the night that the players were actually there who were meant to be. It transpired that one team captain was given envelopes for two players who in fact did not turn up. This wouldn’t have been such a major issue except that one of the players took great delight in going to another club where he was also a member and boasting that he had got his prize money without even going. This obviously angered some players who had been told that if they did not attend they would not get their prize. It was discussed whether or not these players should repay the money before being allowed to register. In the end it was agreed that they should be asked to voluntarily repay the money in the interest of fair play.

Security issues on website and emails

The keeping safe of personal information was discussed and in particular information available on our website which is of course in the public domain. The Secretary confirmed that he was looking at ways of making everyones personal information safer by hopefully introducing a secure area on the site that people visiting would need a password to enter. This should be a big improvement. Email abuse is another area where there have been some problems. Again improvements have been made in this area as now emails sent out by the Secretary do not show all the email addresses to which the email has been sent. It was agreed that the rules would be amended to state that anyone found to be sending out unsolicited emails would be brought before an Appeals Committee who would decide what action to take.

Handbooks

Discussed at last years AGM,  and in more depth at this meeting, it was decided that with the availability of fixtures etc on the website there was now little point in having the handbooks. They are quite expensive to have printed and the general feeling was that many players did not even look at them. It was therefore decided to scrap the handbooks but make sure that every club receives a copy of the fixtures that they can copy and put up on the club notice board and also the same applies to the League rules that every club must receive a copy.

Handicapping

As usual handicapping was discussed. It was agreed that overall the handicapping system worked well. So many black ball games, close matches and close final tables was proof enough of that. The problem area was as always the new players. The system we have been using has not been easy to maintain, for either captains or the Secretary! It relied too heavily on captains keeping tabs on how many games their new players had played. So the Secretary proposed a new scheme which would hopefully have numerous advantages over the old system. It would mean that new players would be shown in a separate section on the clubs page. As always players would start on a handicap recommended by the captain. Then each time the new player plays a game his handicap will be adjusted by 3 points so that he is then playing off that new handicap straight away in the very next game. This way captains will know exactly what to play their new players off each week as they only need to adjust the players handicap by three points from the previous week, also of course the correct handicap will be showing on the website. The big advantage of this system would be that players will reach their right level much sooner and will not find themselves playing 6 games on an unrealistic handicap. It is expected that using this system most new players will find their true level in their first season. Removal of their new player status would be negotiable between the captain and the League Secretary, when it was felt they had reached the right level, addressing the fact that not all players are the same and will need differing periods of review. This new system was voted on and agreed by all delegates.

New team applications

A discussion took place to establish if any of the existing teams were likely to drop out before the start of the new season, it was confirmed that two Thursday teams would not be starting, Claremont and Bpool Subs B. As far as delegates were aware there were no other problems at this stage. There were two new team applications for the Tuesday League and their position was discussed under the next heading. They were from two local golf clubs in Fleetwood and Blackpool North Shore.

Shape of the divisions

Thursdays looks to remain the same as we would appear to be losing a team from each division. Vets will remain the same as there are still 16 teams. Tuesdays was the subject of some discussion. It had been agreed earlier in the season by all delegates that only 10 teams in the 2^nd division was not acceptable and did not give the clubs or the teams and their players a long enough season. It was agreed that, if the numbers remained at 24, we would change the shape of the two divisions to give 16 in the 1^st and 8 in the 2^nd with the teams in the 2^nd division playing each other twice in each half. However, as the secretary pointed out, he had done the maths on this many times and it just cannot work with even one more team than the 24 total. So frustratingly, with the Tank being expelled and the two new teams applying that would in fact give us a total of 25. It was discussed whether or not to refuse one of the new teams but the majority felt that it was crazy to refuse teams when we really need as many teams as we can get. So the  delegates basically left it with the secretary to find a way to make it work with 9 teams in the 2^nd division! Obviously there are a few weeks to go yet before the deadline for entering teams so for all we know there may yet be a non starter in which case the 16+8 system will work fine. Whatever we decide to do this time, it was agreed that we need to write it into the rules that, if either a Tuesday or Thursday League drops to a total of 24 teams then the 16+8 rule will automatically be invoked in the future without the need to vote on it. This was agreed by all delegates.

Addendum to the minutes: Since the meeting there have been a number of changes. Blackpool NS Golf Club decided to withdraw their application on the grounds that they would be unable to allow visiting teams to enter their premises dressed ‘casually’. That means that the Tue League now has 24 teams. Also there have been two teams who as the season approached have realised they have insufficient players to run a team. They are Comrades and South Shore Bowling. That has in fact meant that the total number of Thursday teams has also dropped to 24 and therefore the same 16+8 formula will be used for the Thursday League.

Vets issues and handicapping

The Secretary stated that as far as he was aware there were no major problems affecting the Vets apart from the handicapping problem. He pointed out that there had been problems with the Vets handicaps reaching silly levels a few seasons ago and we had to take drastic measures to bring them down by chopping all handicaps by 50%. It was, he said, going the same way again and we needed to act now to prevent it. His proposal was that the Vets should use the same system as the night leagues by having the level of handicaps capped. His suggestion was accepted and agreed by all delegates and that was to cap Vets handicaps at -30 and +40 and to have a maximum of 30 start in any Vets game.

Financial Report

The Secretary pointed out that we had not had a particularly good financial year. The reason for that was of course the loss of sponsorship deals both from our main sponsor CDK Leisure and also Thwaites who had previously sponsored the pairs competition and the Annual Night Out.  Our net worth was therefore considerably down on the previous year but he said that, to some extent, was the intention because at the end of the day we were not aiming to make high profits, the excess funds should as far as possible be ploughed back to the players by means of prize money. Yet again a record amount of prize money was paid out, almost £4500. This again is a good measure of the success of the League as our prize payout is far higher than other Leagues. He pointed out that if we wished to keep the level of prizes at the same level we would need to raise more funds. And as new sponsorship was unlikely to be forthcoming in this climate, the only way to do it was to raise the extra revenue ourselves. As clubs too are at present struggling financially a large increase in their League fees would not be appropriate, the only other possibility then would be to increase the fee that players pay to be registered. The Secretary proposed a scheme that would see a decent rise in the fee for night players and a reduction in the level of fees for Vets, with Vets over 75 playing for free. However, this was rejected by the meeting and instead an increase of £1 to a new figure of £6 was agreed for all players. Bearing in mind that our finances will need to be on a tight rein this year, there was no proposal to increase the honoraria for any of the League Officers.

Correspondence

None

Annual Night Out

The Secretary also mentioned what an excellent end of season party we had had at the Norbreck. The event had once again been a success with a really good turnout. It was asked if the hosting of the event was open to other clubs. One or two clubs expressed an interest in this. The Secretary accepted that it would always be the case that other clubs would be considered, however, they would he said have to come up with a better package than we were currently getting at the Norbreck. The deal we get from them is not only extremely lucrative financially but also they provide the services of an experienced banqueting manager who ensures the smooth running of the event from start to finish. That in itself is a major factor as we know from experience how difficult a night it is to organise and what a flop it has been when we have been to venues without that kind of backing. So in summary the feelings of the Secretary were, as he is the one to organise the event, why change a winning formula? So yes we are open to offers from other clubs but they will have to be something special for us to change from the present venue.

Other business

That concluded the Secretary’s address and he asked if there was any other business. The only subject to be discussed was a small number of complaints that players who did not attend the Night Out failed to receive their League prizes. The Secretary pointed out that it was laid down in the rules that all players must attend the Night Out in order to receive their prize. He further pointed out that the success of the Night Out depended very much on getting a good turnout. If players did not have to come to collect their prizes the number supporting the event would be so low as to make it hardly worth going to all the trouble organising it. He pointed out that if delegates wanted to change the rules and have no night out he would be more than happy to simply post the cheques out to them and it would certainly be a lot easier than planning and organising such a huge event. The subject was then dropped so the position remains as before and as laid down in the rules.

The Secretary also mentioned player registrations and reminded delegates that no-one was registered at all until such time as their name had been submitted for the coming season and their registration fee paid. Each club must send in their list of players by Sept 1st. As in previous years there will be a ‘one match’ grace period to allow captains who had not paid the registration fees to collect it from their players but he reminded delegates that no player may take part in a second game if his fee has not been paid. The penalty for so doing will be the same as playing an unregistered player. He pointed out that he had to apply this rule strictly otherwise some teams would still not have paid by Xmas.

Finally a question was raised that has been raised before, if we could not perhaps start to adjust players handicaps because they had got older or their eyesight had deteriorated or they had been unwell etc. The Secretary pointed out yet again that there was no provision within the rules for him to alter players handicaps, and that was the way it should stay. Handicaps should only be altered by results. Once you introduce a system where one person is allowed to alter handicaps manually you will get a deluge of players who all feel that they are a special case because of their age or health, and then there would be accusations of bias and special treatment being given to some. The delegates agreed with this opinion and the idea was therefore thrown out.

There was no other matters raised and the meeting was brought to a close and the Secretary thanked all those who attended.