ROTHERHAM MOORGATE LAWN TENNIS CLUB
Minutes of Open Committee Meeting held Wednesday 12th February 2014; 7pm
At Brentwood Hotel
Present - R Wood, TP Burgess, (Chairman), A.Walker, P.Wilman, L. Kirkham, J. McGleave, B Abbassi, M Thomas, B Walker, M Hopps, J Sheriff, F Faries, M Busby
Apologies – G Smith, M. Bird, D Watson, T Bashforth, D Ogiliev, Niall R, D. Lark, J Sharpe, J Harvey
Ways of Working
PB outlined justification for formalising sub groups to address areas of work for the club. Their current makeup is shown below in the attached excel file.
Premises / League Tennis / Club competitions / Social TennisPB / John Mac / Martin T / John Mac
BW / Team Captains / RW / Lynne K
Paul Wilman
David Lark
Frank Faries
Website / Junior Tennis / Complaints / PR & Marketing
Matt Hopps / Glyn Smith / Martin T / Jackie
RW / Mark Busby / Bilal
Committee Members
In addition the following volunteered their help (continued in several cases) with practical tasks
Diane Watson, Tony Bashforth, Danny Ogiliev, Niall R?, Judith Sharpe, Jon Harvey and David Lark, who has already had a look into work needed on lighting and with the fire alarm.
Website: Matthew Hopps to take over responsibility for club site. For reasons of software compatibility, he will design a new site to incorporate an updated version of the court booking system, which should allow a single online membership list to be maintained and rapidly updated. Until that is ready RW will continue to update the current site.
PR & Marketing: Jackie and Bilal will take responsibility for marketing the club, predominantly using free or low cost methods - placing stories in the local media and A4/A5 posters for members to take and put up anywhere they can. This will include specific efforts to target ladies and juniors. Jackie showed a couple of sample posters to the meeting; one for external use and one for internal use – offering a £10 membership discount to existing members who recruit a new member. AW expressed reservations about the principle of members not doing their best to recruit without a financial inducement, but the idea was accepted by the meeting.
Jackie also queried whether marketing should be targeted primarily at memberships or should also look at pay and play options, but it was agreed only limited pay and play – taster sessions - should be allowed as a gateway to membership.
Junior Tennis Team Entries: J Mc reported that he’d discussed this with Glyn and the intention was to enter a single Under 15 team in the S&D competition this year, due to the patchy age distribution of juniors and the ability of the stronger under 12s to cope with competition against older opponents. Mark B will speak to other parents about the possibility of entering an under 12 team.
Financial Management: It was agreed that the handover from Brian to Paul would be phased, so reception of subs can be handled smoothly. Until further notice all correspondence on financial matters should be copied to both Paul and Brian.
Brian noted that although £6500 had been contributed to the sinking fund this year, income will need to increase for us to resurface our courts in 10 years and re-paint in 5 as is likely to be necessary.
Match Fees: J Mc reported that complaints had been received about the level of match fees and that they hadn’t always been applied consistently.
It was agreed that fees should remain as:
Adult 3 pair matches £4
Adult 2 pair matches £3
Juniors £2 including juniors playing in adult matches.
It was also agreed that the club and captains need to communicate that as well as covering the direct costs of playing matches – balls, refreshments and court hire for teams that can’t play all their home fixtures at Moorgate – the fee also guarantees peak court time and fresh opposition.
Since the meeting, Phil Whelan has assured us that despite some of the rumours of discontent originating in the winter league A team, he has consistently collected the correct match fee this winter.
Block Bookings: Block bookings of courts for team practice sessions has caused some concern from members who couldn’t get a court when these ran alongside winter league matches. JMc has trimmed the practice bookings from 2 to 1 court until our involvement in the Winter League Knockout is ended.
AoB:
Coaching Contract: PB, BW and PW to arrange a meeting with Glyn to discuss this. Glyn had expressed an interest in running Cardio Tennis sessions. As these are designed to get non-tennis players fit, using tennis related exercises to music and can be a way in to tennis, it was agreed that if Glyn goes ahead with these, he can open them to non-members providing they use off peak daytime courts and non-members pay an extra £1 per session payable to the club.
Sportivate: It was agreed that if we’re to do this again we need to do it better, forging stronger links with schools and or colleges.
Jackie mentioned LTA initiatives we might consider
Great British Tennis Week
National Mini Tennis Month
Sign on Moorgate Avenue? PB has approached Rotherham Council before without success and will have another go.
Wimbledon Draw: RW reported back from an LTA presentation on the new online draw system. We must include all adult and junior, but not mini British Tennis members whose BT membership is linked to Moorgate. Any members who are allocated tickets have 14 days to decline them via the British Tennis website so the earlier we can run the draw, the better.
To allow this to happen it was agreed we’d ask members to pay their subs by the start, not the end of April.
Next meeting: Wednesday 12th March at Moorgate.