Surrey Squash and Racketball Association – AGM
Minutes of the Annual General Meeting of the Surrey Squash & Racketball Association held on Wednesday 18th July 2012 held at Purley Sports Club.
1. Bob Gray, President, welcomed the members present including a thank you to Kirstie Thompson our Regional England Squash Representative.
2. Apologies were received from Keith Richards, Mike Hennings, Sam Holliday, Danny Lee, Will Exelby, Jane Courtney, Geoff Howes.
Seamus Andrew Buchanan who, in the 1970’s and 80’s, was one of three County coaches who helped our men’s squad win Surrey’s first national championship title, informed us that one of the other coaches, Joe Lambdon, died last year.
We would also like to extend our regrets to Denis Brickwood’s family. Denis, who died at the age of 96, will be a major loss to Purley Squash Club members.
3. The minutes of the 2011 meeting were approved and signed as a true and accurate record of the meeting. Proposed by Claire Baker and Seconded by Isabelle Tweedle.
4. Matters Arising from the minutes – none
5. Chairman’s’ Annual Report
Patrick stated that he would summarise his report and that the full report would be emailed to all the clubs and available to download or view on the surreysra.co.uk website within a few days. The following is the summary:
We are in a good financial position with a surplus for the year of about £6k for the seniors and a small deficit of £0.5k for the juniors. These figures include the costs of Sam Holliday and Neil Frankland for part of the year; without these development costs we would have had a surplus of about £10k. At year-end we had a net bank balance of £25k plus £25k in reserves, so cumulative total funds of £50k.
A big thank you to Isabelle who does a great job and also thanks to all our league co-ordinators.
Unfortunately we had to take disciplinary action against an individual who had obtained unauthorised access to Leaguemaster and had modified results. We want to make it clear that unethical behaviour will not be tolerated.
We introduced a new ‘Social league’ and four clubs were participating. So far it has been very successful.
Our Awards night was held at St Georges Hill and was most successful; thanks to Tim Stainton and Danny Lee.
Individuals – Tom Richards is now 15th in the World.
Our County Closed event was held at Lakeside in January- a very successful turnout of 100 entries but we still need more, especially in the men’s C grade. Our thanks go to Claire Baker for a well-run event.
Our Junior County Closed event was held in September, well run by Phil Rushworth and a number of volunteers and also with about 100 entries.
We also held a County Doubles event, thanks to the RAC club.
Two Surrey clubs again contested the final of the PSL which was held at Surrey Sports Park. Surrey Health & Rackets (Esporta) beat St Georges Hill; this was their third victory in a row (four victories in total).
SYG (Surrey Youth Games) – Phil Hall ran this event very successfully at Surrey Sports Park. We need to link the entrants to our clubs to keep them involved in squash.
Keith Richards has produced the Surrey newsletter to a very high standard. For the first time we have posted to our website and this enabled us to save about £3k as we did not have to print and post to clubs.
The new website continues to be up to date and is running well, thanks to Sam Holliday who is always looking new information for it.
Neil Frankland has run a Marking/Referee course held in questionnaire format to make it more interesting. The charge of £70 per session goes towards development.
John Hughes, Marketing, is putting together a brand proposal to project a consistent “Brand” image. This will not cost anything as a design company is doing the work for nothing in exchange for free advertising. The new branding will help us attract sponsorship money which could be used for further development. Patrick has attended a ‘Forum’ to share ideas and best practice; it includes the chairmen of Kent, Sussex, Surrey and Middlesex.
6. Development Plan.
We needed to appoint people on a paid basis and Neil and Sam have made a significant contribution with their efforts, visiting 30 clubs, advising on increasing court usage, court maintenance, running tournaments and providing links with coaches, etc.
Patrick asked for any questions/comments – none.
Bob thanked Patrick for making such huge changes in how we operate, not just in development, but in shaking up every part of our organisation. He also thanked all fourteen volunteers on the committee, not only the four present.
7. Treasurer’s Report.
Isabelle presented her report:
The Seniors have two main sources of income - 12.5% of county affiliation fees that come to us from England Squash (ESRA), and league fees from clubs. Our main costs, apart from development, are expenses incurred by the Inter-County Senior teams.
The Juniors have one source of income from county squad fees and in the year made a net loss of £500 on the expenses incurred by the Inter-County Junior teams.
Isabelle asked for any questions/comments – none.
Acceptance of the accounts was proposed by Bob Gray and seconded by Patrick Fleming.
It was noted that the accounts were for the year ended 30 April 2012 and they therefore showed development costs for only part of the year. Patrick estimated that with a full year of these costs we should be able to break even.
8. Election of Officers
The committee of the SSRA made the following nominations:
1. President Bob Gray
2. Chairman Patrick Fleming
3. Honorary Secretary Janice Rowland
4. Honorary Treasurer Isabelle Tweedle
All four were re-elected unanimously.
9. AOB
Patrick and Bob said that they would be working on a new constitution which they hoped to complete in time for the next AGM.
Kirstie Thompson handed out the results of a survey conducted nationally from all sports by Sport England. Squash came about seventh overall and maintained user levels whereas Rugby for example had declining user levels and had their funding reduced.
There was considerable interest in these findings and the following questions were asked: 1. Can we as a county do a similar survey? 2. Can we find out how we perform over the rest of the Country?
Tim Stainton said that we were planning to introduce a Ranking system. We would base it on Leaguemaster results to start with and trial it at a couple of members’ clubs before rolling it out. We could then start to develop our own statistics which we could use in various ways, eg to target groups for the Surrey Closed, spot juniors climbing the rankings to become a ‘junior of interest’,etc.
In conclusion the committee thanked Ian Hawson, Jane Courtney and Don Frankland who administer the Junior Trust fund.
As there were no further AOB items, the meeting was closed at 8.35pm.