GLOUCESTERSHIRE SHORT MAT BOWLING ASSOCIATION
MINUTES OF MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE MEETING
Held on Monday 04 November 2024 at 7.00pm
at Kingsway Community Centre, Thatcham Avenue, Quedgeley GL2 2GS
APOLOGIES
1. Apologies for absence were received from Mike Sparrow (League Secretary), Clive O’Gorman
(Woodmancote), Val New (Bishop’s Cleeve), Veronica Baldwin (Wotton Hall). A full list of attendees is
attached to these minutes.
MINUTES OF PREVIOUS MEETING
2. The minutes of the previous meeting on 09 September 2024 had been circulated and, there being no
amendments, were approved and signed as a true record by the Chair.
MATTERS ARISING FROM MINUTES
3. Jenny Carter (Treasurer) reported that insurance cover for County equipment at Kingsway had been
increased to £10,000, as agreed at our previous meeting. The additional premium paid was £20.
OFFICERS’ REPORTS
4. The Secretary reported that:
- With the agreement of other officers he had returned our entry into next year’s restructured ICC in time for the deadline of 30 October and paid the fee of £100.
- He had revised the list of club contacts for minutes and general information, based on information in
club registration forms - He had circulated the usual correspondence from ESMBA including minutes of meetings and their
regular newsletter.
He confirmed that the webmaster, Julian Kellett, was included in his distribution list and that he would ask Julian to publish approved minutes on the Association’s website.
5. The Treasurer stated that our current account balance stood at £9306.07, but several cheques had
not yet been presented, amounting to about £1.800 (including £1,500 to ESMBA in membership fees etc).
Once these cheques cleared, the balance would be about £7,500.
6. The Membership Secretary noted that current membership had increased slightly over last year to
308, mostly accounted for by Caer Glow joining the Association. She needs to follow up with one club who
have not yet settled their individual membership fees.
7. The Competition Secretary announced that the first County Competition of the season, the Singles,
had been won by Saul Featherstone, defeating Julian Kellett in the final. There was a good turnout of 20
players and he was pleased to say that the remaining competitions were equally well supported. It appeared
that the reduction in entry fees to £5 had worked both to encourage entries and financially, as numbers were
significantly up on the previous year. After deduction of fees to ESMBA for National entries the balance of
fees was £605, which would cover the cost of hiring the hall all competition days. Asked about entries to
National competitions, he replied that 85 of the 172 total entries (almost exactly 50%) had indicated that
they wished to go forward to Nationals, which was again a marked improvement over last season.
8. The League Secretary was not present but we learned from Mike Wall that he had encountered no
problems so far. Mike then noted the Summer League had concluded with 2 Yorkley teams in the final.
Teams had noticed that the 1st eliminator round, with 8 teams involved had produced the best atmosphere, so next year there will be no separate Finals day – all the matches will be played on one day.
9. We discussed the question of what should happen if a player was foot faulting: the meeting agreed
that on noticing a foot fault the opposing skip/team should warn the player concerned that he/she was
breaking the law. If the offence were to be repeated then the bowl delivered following the foot fault should
be removed.
10. The County Team Captain reported that the County squad had got together on 21 September with a
full day of pairs, triples and fours games. The was well attended and enjoyable. The team has played 3 ICC
championship matches, Avon at home on 28 September (win for Gloucestershire), Herefordshire away on 5
October (lost) and at home on 2 November, which Gloucestershire won. There are 2 scheduled matches in
November, an ICC match v. Wiltshire, away on 9 November and the home leg of the Brunel Cup on 16
November.
PROPOSED AMENDMENTS TO THE CONSTITUTION
11. The Officers met to review the Constitution on 21 October and proposed several amendments, which
were highlighted in the revised copy attached to the agenda for this meeting. The officers sought the support
of the full Committee to put these to the next AGM in April. The meeting reviewed these amendments and
accepted many without objection: those which aroused debate or were amended by the meeting are dealt
with in detail below:
- Paragraph 2b: Mike Wall queried the additional sentence which required clubs to seek approval
from the Committee for multi-club tournaments. The Chair explained that the Association had a duty of care to make sure that any tournament was properly organized and insured. There ensued a debate over insurance requirements and it became clear that the meeting would not accept the amendment as it stood. - Paragraph 5b: it was pointed out that since the County Captain is now recognised as an Officer in
para 5a, there was no need for this para, which also contradicts the method of election. We decided to delete this paragraph. - Paragraph 5c: there was considerable opposition to the proposal to reduce the size of the
Management Committee and support for the current arrangement that allows each member club to send a delegate. While accepting that recent meetings (this one included) had been poorly attended and quite often not achieving as quorum, delegates did not wish to lose the right of representation. The reasons for poor attendance may lie in the past, when meetings had on occasion been confrontational. - There was a proposal from the floor that the quorum for the meeting should be amended to a fixed
number, rather than a percentage of those entitled to attend (see para 7a), which would effectively address the problem of Committee meetings not being quorate. The consensus was to leave para 5c unchanged (except for the deletion of reference to captains) and amend paragraph 7a to set a quorum of 9 for Committee meetings (including officers). The provisions for calculating the quorum could then be deleted from para 7a. - Paragraph 10: Safeguarding. The officers proposed the addition of this paragraph on the advice of
our Safeguarding Officer and to conform to ESMBA requirements to commit to safeguarding policy. Mike Wall had completed the club health check list from ESMBA, which produced a low score for his club. If clubs had to comply with every requirement from ESMBA, he was concerned that it would overburden them with too much bureaucracy. While agreeing that some of this would be impractical for smaller clubs, the officers pointed out that we had to conform to continue our affiliation. However, we did agree to replace ‘must adopt’ to ‘should adopt’ in para 10b, which allowed some latitude to clubs in how they implemented these policies.
MISSING COUNTY TROPHIES
12. Following up the discussion at our previous meeting, we reviewed the decision to purchase of new
trophies. Mike Wall proposed that we should instead write to the last know holders in a final effort to
recover the missing trophies. There was general support for this proposal: Mike Edginton spoke of the pride
in seeing his name on the trophy, denied to others if we had to obtain a new trophy. David Bubb said that it
was also important to those who had donated trophies to see them presented. There was also a sense of
injustice that holders had not returned items that did not belong to them. We therefore agreed that the
Secretary should write to the last known holders directly and, if they did have a trophy, to make
arrangements to return it; if not, to indicate who did have the trophy or where it might be.
AOB
13. The ESMBA had invited GSMBA to enter a team in their new County Double Rink competition on
23 February 2025. We agreed that we should enter a team, so the Secretary would complete the entry form
and send it and the relevant fee to the competition organiser.
Date of next meeting
We will meet next on 13 January 2025, with an alternative of 20 January, if we cannot book the
room at Kingsway.
LIST OF ATTENDEES
Chris Evans (Chair, Kingsway), Andy Todd (Secretary, Cheltenham Whaddon), David Bubb (Forest of
Dean), Jenny Carter (Treasurer, Wotton Hall), Barbara Bubb (Membership Secretary, Forest of Dean), Mike
Wall (Yorkley), Monica Carter (County Captain, Ripple), Mike Edginton (Westbury-on-Severn), Phil
Jennings (Kingsway)
Minutes prepared by:
Andy Todd
Secretary, GSMBA
Signed as a true record:
Chris Evans
Chair, GSMBA
