Report of March Council Meeting

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Colin Irwin holding a "Hopewell" Hoop, with Alan Pidcock (left), Ian Vincent and David Maugham (Photo: Quiller Barrett)

In opening the meeting, the Chairman thanked the retiring individually elected members of Council: David Openshaw, Ian Parkinson, Alan Pidcock and Ian Vincent. The last two are seeking re-election, the latter only as Hon. Secretary.

The 2009 accounts, which now show an overall surplus of £13K after accounting adjustments, were approved for submission to the AGM. A revised budget for 2010 was approved. It was noted that both the Benefactors and General Funds were depleted, following the extension to the office, but that an appeal for legacies had recently been made. It was agreed to start a Building Maintenance Fund, to provide for work when it became necessary.

It was agreed by a small majority to reduce the rate of tournament levy from 30% to 25% in 2011. The main argument in favour was the concern expressed by clubs who perceived the levy as a tax on clubs holding CA events; that against that clubs were merely collecting money from individual players, and that it was right that active tournament players should contribute more. The Management Committee are considering the wider picture with the intention of making longer-term proposals.

Subscription increases of £2 to the standard individual rate, and 30p (subject to the April RPI not being significantly lower than expected) to the per-capita club subscription, were agreed for 2011 (the last change was for 2009).

John Handy was thanked for donating the Murphy Shield for the Golf Croquet 2nd division club teams event, which had attracted 15 entries. It was noted that the fixtures calendar has become a lot more congested, but that the CA sees its role more as a scheduler than a gatekeeper of events.

Drafts for constitutional changes to implement the changes to voting procedures discussed at the last meeting were agreed to go before the AGM, but an additional proposal to remove the requirement for Council to specifically sanction membership of committees by non-currently elected members (the President and Vice-Presidents) was rejected, though it will be proposed that they should now be permitted to chair committees.

The main business was to discuss the issue of international representation. The team selected by the CA for the MacRobertson Shield has traditionally represented the whole of Great Britain (and at one time Ireland), but the Scottish and Welsh CAs are independent members of the WCF. This discrepancy has been highlighted by introduction of lower tiers of the World Team Championship, in which they wish to compete, and other countries understandably regard this as having our cake and eating it. The problem is how to resolve this, given that the CA, the other Home Associations and Overseas Associations all have an interest, and decisions made by one are likely to constrain the others. The meeting was told that the WCF Management Committee intended to propose a motion to the August WCF Council meeting that only individual, not composite, teams should be allowed to compete. As a consequence, the proposal that the CA Council should take a decision, after consultation with the interested parties, in January 2011 was amended to bring this forward to a special meeting in July. Straw polls to show the current opinion of Council members revealed a large majority in favour of retaining the MacRobertson Shield as the World Team Championship (or its top tier, if the lower tiers continue), but only a small majority, with a large number of abstentions, in favour of the CA team being restricted to English players.

A proposal to introduce a new top level award for exceptional service to Croquet was amended to instead extend the conditions for the award of the existing Council Medal, and those for CA Diplomas were extended to include service to Federations as well as Clubs.

Finally, the equipment committee were asked to investigate ordering, or commissioning, a set of "super-hoops" to test their effectiveness for top level play in various types of ground and it was announced that the dimensions of the prototype "Hopewell" hoop (the development of which had been funded by Gordon Hopewell) had met the requirements for both championship and standard approval.