April 2009 Council Meeting : Details

[David Sedgwick]

Maybe I'm a little slow on the uptake, but I completely missed that the SCCU proposal would create an extra competition - I just assumed that the bands would be shifted to take account of the new grades.

Given that the number of players in each county won't magically increase by 20%, where will the players and captains for an extra team in each county come from?

I confess to being completely baffled by this.

The main SCCU motion did indeed simply seek to replace the old grading limits of 175/150/125/100 with their close equivalents of 180/160/140/120. The proposal to introduce a new U100 Division was tabled as a separate motion - an excellent procedural suggestion put forward by Richard Haddrell at the SCCU Executive Committee Meeting on 6th March.

The percentages of players available for each existing Division are approximately 90/80/60/40, a situation which will now be maintained. This suggests that there is scope for a new Division for which approximately 20% of players are eligible. As Mike Gunn mentions, this idea has been successfully trialled in the SCCU.

OK - I see how this might work in the SCCU, which has just six counties, most with large populations.

It's less clear how successful this will be in other unions. The MCCU, for instance, has 11 counties and the region's population is far smaller than that of the SCCU. Two MCCU counties fielded no teams at all in the current season. Only one (Warwickshire) competed in in each section. Six counties entered teams in the U100 (Staffordshire entered two teams, one of which was a junior team I think).

This doesn't suggest to me that there is significant latent demand in the Midlands for an extra competition.

This is a concern which I understand.

When I proposed the second motion, I suggested that Council delegates shouldn't vote for it unless they felt that there was at least a possibility of it receiving support from their area.

The counter argument was that, if no-one entered from outside the SCCU, no harm would be done. The two SCCU nominees would simply contest the title themselves.

This is the one thing thast almost certainly won't happen. SCCU teams aren't going to want to get a bye to the Final and then have to go to Leicester to play each other. I imagine that the SCCU will make its nominations conditional on there being at least some from other Unions.

Unions don't have to organise a Union Stage competition if they think there won't be any support. As with any other Division, they can still make two nominations for the National Stages even if they don't.

If the MCCU and NCCU should decide to "rebel" as discussed up thread, this particular problem will be solved. U100 will then be the only level apart from the Open for which they'll have no difficulty in making National Stage nominations.

[IM Jack Rudd]

WECU counties generally don't have the population base to support large numbers of county teams. In general, they'll have enough players to support one or two, and if two, it's anyone's guess where the cutoff between first and second teams will lie. Thus the first/second team thing is there because it's the best arrangement for us on a regional level.

If WECU counties want to enter the national stages, it is rare that there is more than one nomination from the region in any given event. If there is, then (up to this season just finishing):
- Results of first team matches count in Open/Minor qualifiers.
- Results of second team matches (or U-150 matches against Dorset, who do not have a first team) count in U-150 qualifiers.
- Specific qualifiers for other national stage events are organized as and when needed.

[David Sedgwick]

What puzzled me is that 180-160 (new) is such a narrow band. Since that event is not very successful, why is it not 185-160?

The U175 Division has been much more successful in 2009-09, as a result of the October 2008 rule changes increasing the permitted number of nominations.

As is explained in the SCCU paper, the target was to have 90% of players eligible for the highest grading limited Division and 80% eligible for the second highest.

On 2008 new grades, 78% of players are under new 160 and 91% under new 180.

94% of players are under new 185, too high in my view to make that a sensible limit. There's no point in having a grading limited Division which merely serves as a consolation prize for teams unsuccessful in the Open. We already have the Minor Counties Championship for that purpose.

[benedgell]

I'm disapointed there's been no word of public apology or explanation r.e the £8000 overspend for the British Championships 08. Seems like they're hoping that by making very little reference to it the issue will be swept under the carpet and forgotten about.

[Stewart Reuben]

Concerning the overspend in Liverpool. A cogent explanation of this was given by David Welch, my predecessor, at the Council Meeting. These were all matters beyond my control.
1. It was essential the lighting be improved at St George's Hall.
2. The venue was of inadequate size so that another suite of two rooms had to be hired.
3. The day I arrived at the start of the event they insisted that we would have to pay for staffing the refreshments room. I was faced with a fait accompli.

I was amused that nobody had the sense or sensitivity to comment on the fact that the International Directorship came in well under budget. That, of course, is/was also under my stewardship.
People always want to be critical rather than supportive of officers. It is a terribly corrosive practice in any organisation, but most of all in a voluntary one.

Stewart Reuben

[Carl Hibbard]

1. It was essential the lighting be improved at St George's Hall.
2. The venue was of inadequate size so that another suite of two rooms had to be hired.

Surely the first two would have been checked prior to the event starting?

[Matthew Turner]

Stewart,
I think you did a brilliant job with the British at Liverpool. You made it a very decent event, when it was heading for a disaster, and the fact it made an £8,000 loss was certainly not your fault. However, whilst the factors that led to a £8,000 loss were beyond your control, they were not 'unknowable'. David Welch has a vast experience of running the British and if he didn't realise the playing venue wasn't big enough, or well enough lit, then frankly that is pretty poor. I know that David and yourself and most offer people who work for the ECF are either actually, or effectively, volunteers and I not suggesting the ECF go about suing David for breach of contract or neglect of duty. However, I also think that it is sometimes too easy to say "Don't blame me for being totally incompetent - I'm just a volunteer"

[Ben Purton]

Do we know who the candidates are for the elections , i mean all i know is Jack .

Ben

[Stewart Reuben]

The ECF Board has yet to create the specifications for the new post of Chairman, which is the post Jack might aspire to. I am not sure whether we will wait until the October Council to get that ratified and then have the meeting vote immediately afterwards. I see no problem with that.
The matter of finding a figure head President might then only happen after the new Board I(including chairman) is appointed. That seems to me agonisingly slow.
Stewart Reuben

[Jaimie Wilson]

What puzzled me is that 180-160 (new) is such a narrow band. Since that event is not very successful, why is it not 185-160?

The U175 Division has been much more successful in 2009-09, as a result of the October 2008 rule changes increasing the permitted number of nominations.

As is explained in the SCCU paper, the target was to have 90% of players eligible for the highest grading limited Division and 80% eligible for the second highest.

On 2008 new grades, 78% of players are under new 160 and 91% under new 180.

94% of players are under new 185, too high in my view to make that a sensible limit. There's no point in having a grading limited Division which merely serves as a consolation prize for teams unsuccessful in the Open. We already have the Minor Counties Championship for that purpose.

Having read as much as I could take in, my understanding of the new open/U180/U160/U140/U120/U100 bands is that they are set up with a view to having approximately 100%,90%,80%,60%,40% and 20% of players elligible for each section respectively, roughly maintaining the status quo with the addition of the U100 section which has been successfully trialed in the SCCU as an U75 'old grade' tournament. So far so good, but I have concerns with the amount of 'overlapping' between teams, particularly in the highest limited grade section - even in the SCCU I calculated that out of the 640 appearances that players made in the 20 matches in the regional stage of the U175 tournament last year, 254 of these places (40%) were filled either by players graded 150 or by lower board forfeits. I'm no expert of course, but this percentage seems very high to me and I'm concerned that this is serving to discourage counties from entering as many teams as they otherwise might.