Newsletter October 2004
CHAIRMAN’S WORDS
Once again, this year’s newsletter includes some of the reports from the AGM. I hope everyone will take on board some of the comments. Income over the year totalled £7,725 from fund raising, subs, tea money etc. Expenditure totalled £7,602 which included £800 for the store room extension. As we had £1,100 in the bank at the start of the year, we have therefore finished it with around £1,200 at the end. These are healthy figures and well done to all those involved, both on the organisational side but also on the supporting side. For instance, one of our main fund raising events, the race night, wouldn’t work if their weren’t around 60 people in the community prepared to help the club and sponsor a horse. This is an indication that the club is fairly efficient at raising the funds it needs to function and to keep moving forward. This might also give the impression that players and friends of the club do not need to get involved with the club’s organisation. However, running the club is becoming harder as their appears to be less people doing the work. We would like everyone to join us in helping to run the club. The first of this year’s general committee meetings is on Monday 29th November at 7.30pm in the White Horse. Please come along.
CHAIRMAN’S REPORT (abridged report given at the 2004 AGM)
I started last year’s Chairman’s report by saying that we seemed to have had a good year both on and off the pitch and, in many ways, the same could be applied to this year as well. The main fund raising events, the Hog Roast and Race Night, did about as well as in the previous year. There were not as many of the minor fund raising events and yet at the end of the year we have a healthy bank balance even though, once again, we have had one major extra item of expenditure – namely the store room extension. This is a tribute to all the hard work put in by the committee and organisers of the events – many of them ladies. Thank you very much.
However, the initial statement above does not tell the full story and this brings me to the first of the problems facing the club. The club is too reliant on a very small group of willing workers. The committee is getting too small, particularly this year, as both Chris Horbury and Helen Rucklidge, while continuing to work for the club in various ways, are no longer standing. Thank you to them for all their hard work.
Continuing the above theme, the number of people who readily help at events are too few. Without the fund raising and fund raisers, the money raised from cricket related activities, i.e. match and annual subs and tea money, would have to triple. Take this year’s Hog Roast for instance. too few people were involved in working on the day and attempts to get more help fell on deaf ears. Some of the willing workers have informed me that if next year’s event is run on the same basis as this year’s, they will be very reluctant to join in and have even suggested that we do something else. More people have to volunteer. We don’t want to be constantly chasing people to do things. Similarly, the race night, whilst all the horses are sponsored and is therefore supported from afar, is not supported as well as I feel it should be on the night by everybody associated with the club and particularly the players. The players have to take more responsibility for their club. I keep hoping that the players would realise that the more they supported and brought friends to the fund raising activities the more money we would raise and any pressure to raise subs or funds elsewhere and, more importantly, pressure on people’s time, would be reduced.
Another problem facing the club is the number of players that we have. The club has lost a lot of players over the last couple of years and whilst, when everybody is available, we don’t have any problem raising 2 very good sides, there is a problem when we lose players because of farming, football and other reasons. Last year, 4 second team matches were cancelled and, apart from the resulting fines that are incurred, there is also the lost revenue from both match subs and tea money. There is a responsibility from players to help the captains. Dropping out on the morning of the match is not helpful. Hopefully as the current crop of juniors get a little older they will be able to help out in the adult teams.
I hope everybody enjoyed the Gala Dinner, with the excellent speaker, jazz band, food etc. It was a huge undertaking and thank you to those people who organised it. This doesn’t mean we would necessarily do things the same way if we were holding another one. The marquee was expensive. Perhaps we should have considered holding the event in a barn. Maybe we should have tried to start the disco earlier and perhaps we should have missed some things out of the middle. Perhaps we should have had a family disco from 6 till 8pm the night before. I’m sure now that we should have chosen a different day. Isn’t hindsight wonderful? There were one or two logistical issues to overcome, however we learnt a lot. We had 140 paying guests which was probably the minimum we needed to hold the event, this wasn’t helped by one table dropping out at the payment point. Whilst, we had initially wanted around 180 people, even another 20 would have started to make a reasonable profit. As it is we made a profit of around £400. We would like to hear your thoughts in case we ever consider holding something similar. Thank you again to those involved with organising the dinner.
What I do know is that we did our best to celebrate Beryl’s 50 years of service to the club. This is a huge achievement and has been mentioned at various events throughout the year, at the final of the reserve evening cup, the Hog Roast and was presented with flowers by Lawnswood (and a kiss from Chester) after their annual friendly match. I would like to officially thank Beryl at the 2004 Church Fenton AGM on behalf of the club for those 50 years of service.
There are also other people in the club to thank for fulfilling various jobs throughout the year. Tim, Richard and particularly Jo Grogan (as I’m sure she did most of the work) for looking after Travis for the season. To Alan Wilson for employing Travis. To Travis himself for being that rare breed – a reasonably house-trained and civilised Australian as well as being a good cricketer and enjoyable company. We hope he enjoyed his stay here. Thank you to the committee, the ground staff, the scorers, the captains (1st, 2nd and Thursday evening teams) and those running the juniors. Thank you to Sue and Nigel at the White Horse who do a lot more for the club than people realise. Also thanks to Martin Horbury for setting up and moving the Club forward into an Internet Site www.cfcc.org.uk and also to those that helped with the golf day, to the quiz team who have donated their winnings to the club, and finally, but by no means least, to the fund raising bicycle riders.
Which brings me to the cricket. Didn’t the 1st team do well. Coming second in Division One equals our best ever position and they were one win away from being champions. They have shown a year on year improvement over the last four years. They went passed 300 on 3 occasions (at least) and averaged over 250 batting first. Well done to the players. It also indicates that the Ground staff must be doing something right. We also benefited from purchasing the covers in 2003. In what has been a fairly rainy season, I don’t believe we would have been challenging for honors without them. I still feel the 1st team should be doing better in the cup matches. The second team got to the final of the reserve evening cup but otherwise their season was disappointing. I’m still convinced we have one of the best 2nd teams in the league.
Finally, our thoughts are with Lofty and Sarah and their families and friends. Sport is important but only as a distraction from the really important things. We hope that John gets better soon.
Once again, this year’s newsletter includes some of the reports from the AGM. I hope everyone will take on board some of the comments. Income over the year totalled £7,725 from fund raising, subs, tea money etc. Expenditure totalled £7,602 which included £800 for the store room extension. As we had £1,100 in the bank at the start of the year, we have therefore finished it with around £1,200 at the end. These are healthy figures and well done to all those involved, both on the organisational side but also on the supporting side. For instance, one of our main fund raising events, the race night, wouldn’t work if their weren’t around 60 people in the community prepared to help the club and sponsor a horse. This is an indication that the club is fairly efficient at raising the funds it needs to function and to keep moving forward. This might also give the impression that players and friends of the club do not need to get involved with the club’s organisation. However, running the club is becoming harder as their appears to be less people doing the work. We would like everyone to join us in helping to run the club. The first of this year’s general committee meetings is on Monday 29th November at 7.30pm in the White Horse. Please come along.
CHAIRMAN’S REPORT (abridged report given at the 2004 AGM)
I started last year’s Chairman’s report by saying that we seemed to have had a good year both on and off the pitch and, in many ways, the same could be applied to this year as well. The main fund raising events, the Hog Roast and Race Night, did about as well as in the previous year. There were not as many of the minor fund raising events and yet at the end of the year we have a healthy bank balance even though, once again, we have had one major extra item of expenditure – namely the store room extension. This is a tribute to all the hard work put in by the committee and organisers of the events – many of them ladies. Thank you very much.
However, the initial statement above does not tell the full story and this brings me to the first of the problems facing the club. The club is too reliant on a very small group of willing workers. The committee is getting too small, particularly this year, as both Chris Horbury and Helen Rucklidge, while continuing to work for the club in various ways, are no longer standing. Thank you to them for all their hard work.
Continuing the above theme, the number of people who readily help at events are too few. Without the fund raising and fund raisers, the money raised from cricket related activities, i.e. match and annual subs and tea money, would have to triple. Take this year’s Hog Roast for instance. too few people were involved in working on the day and attempts to get more help fell on deaf ears. Some of the willing workers have informed me that if next year’s event is run on the same basis as this year’s, they will be very reluctant to join in and have even suggested that we do something else. More people have to volunteer. We don’t want to be constantly chasing people to do things. Similarly, the race night, whilst all the horses are sponsored and is therefore supported from afar, is not supported as well as I feel it should be on the night by everybody associated with the club and particularly the players. The players have to take more responsibility for their club. I keep hoping that the players would realise that the more they supported and brought friends to the fund raising activities the more money we would raise and any pressure to raise subs or funds elsewhere and, more importantly, pressure on people’s time, would be reduced.
Another problem facing the club is the number of players that we have. The club has lost a lot of players over the last couple of years and whilst, when everybody is available, we don’t have any problem raising 2 very good sides, there is a problem when we lose players because of farming, football and other reasons. Last year, 4 second team matches were cancelled and, apart from the resulting fines that are incurred, there is also the lost revenue from both match subs and tea money. There is a responsibility from players to help the captains. Dropping out on the morning of the match is not helpful. Hopefully as the current crop of juniors get a little older they will be able to help out in the adult teams.
I hope everybody enjoyed the Gala Dinner, with the excellent speaker, jazz band, food etc. It was a huge undertaking and thank you to those people who organised it. This doesn’t mean we would necessarily do things the same way if we were holding another one. The marquee was expensive. Perhaps we should have considered holding the event in a barn. Maybe we should have tried to start the disco earlier and perhaps we should have missed some things out of the middle. Perhaps we should have had a family disco from 6 till 8pm the night before. I’m sure now that we should have chosen a different day. Isn’t hindsight wonderful? There were one or two logistical issues to overcome, however we learnt a lot. We had 140 paying guests which was probably the minimum we needed to hold the event, this wasn’t helped by one table dropping out at the payment point. Whilst, we had initially wanted around 180 people, even another 20 would have started to make a reasonable profit. As it is we made a profit of around £400. We would like to hear your thoughts in case we ever consider holding something similar. Thank you again to those involved with organising the dinner.
What I do know is that we did our best to celebrate Beryl’s 50 years of service to the club. This is a huge achievement and has been mentioned at various events throughout the year, at the final of the reserve evening cup, the Hog Roast and was presented with flowers by Lawnswood (and a kiss from Chester) after their annual friendly match. I would like to officially thank Beryl at the 2004 Church Fenton AGM on behalf of the club for those 50 years of service.
There are also other people in the club to thank for fulfilling various jobs throughout the year. Tim, Richard and particularly Jo Grogan (as I’m sure she did most of the work) for looking after Travis for the season. To Alan Wilson for employing Travis. To Travis himself for being that rare breed – a reasonably house-trained and civilised Australian as well as being a good cricketer and enjoyable company. We hope he enjoyed his stay here. Thank you to the committee, the ground staff, the scorers, the captains (1st, 2nd and Thursday evening teams) and those running the juniors. Thank you to Sue and Nigel at the White Horse who do a lot more for the club than people realise. Also thanks to Martin Horbury for setting up and moving the Club forward into an Internet Site www.cfcc.org.uk and also to those that helped with the golf day, to the quiz team who have donated their winnings to the club, and finally, but by no means least, to the fund raising bicycle riders.
Which brings me to the cricket. Didn’t the 1st team do well. Coming second in Division One equals our best ever position and they were one win away from being champions. They have shown a year on year improvement over the last four years. They went passed 300 on 3 occasions (at least) and averaged over 250 batting first. Well done to the players. It also indicates that the Ground staff must be doing something right. We also benefited from purchasing the covers in 2003. In what has been a fairly rainy season, I don’t believe we would have been challenging for honors without them. I still feel the 1st team should be doing better in the cup matches. The second team got to the final of the reserve evening cup but otherwise their season was disappointing. I’m still convinced we have one of the best 2nd teams in the league.
Finally, our thoughts are with Lofty and Sarah and their families and friends. Sport is important but only as a distraction from the really important things. We hope that John gets better soon.
Labels: Past Newsletters
