Here are the minutes of the 41st Annual General Meeting of Stoolball England. Copies of of the Chairman’s and Treasurer’s reports, alongwith the Statement of Accounts and Minutes can be found at the end of this article.
PRESENT:
Stoolball England Officers: Mrs Kay Price (President), Mr Kelvin
Speirs (Chairman, Rules and Umpires), Mrs Anita Broad (Vice-Chair, Research and
Education), Mrs Wendy Heal (Secretary), Georgina Harrison (Treasurer), Mrs Genevieve Gordon Thomson (Governance
and Legal), Mr Richard Emsley (Membership
and DBS), Sophie Dunn (Youth Ambassador Sussex),
Meg James (Youth Ambassador West Kent),
Lynda Mullins (Welfare), Gwyn Griffith,
Life Members: Mr John Price and Mrs Kay Price
Leagues, Associations and
Clubs Represented
Surrey Ladies Stoolball Association: Gwyn Griffith
Mid Division (SCSA): Karen Speirs, Pauline Hurley, Lynda Mullins,
Sophie Dunn
Sussex County Umpires Association: Kelvin Speirs
North Division (SCSA): Wendy Heal, Anita Broad, Denise Goldsmith
Chanctonbury: Sally Booker, Geoff Laker
Coastal: Nicole Purkis, Kate Lutman
West Division (SCSA): Kay Price, Melissa Mantle
West Kent: Meg James, Georgie Harrison, Anne Hardwick
Central Division (SCSA): Sonia Halls
Sussex County Stoolball Association: Kay Price, Pauline Hurley
Mid Sussex Mixed League: Richard Emsley, Rick Mason
Vice Presidents: John Pritchett
- Chairman’s welcome
Kelvin welcomed everyone to the meeting
Georgie asked everyone to mute their microphone.
Everyone was asked to put their hand up to speak or
send questions through to be answered.
Georgie announced that the meeting was going to be
recorded and stored on the Zoom cloud.
Everyone had received a disclaimer; we had not received any objections. Attendees were asked to send a message if
they wished the recording to be stopped at any point to Georgie.
The recording started.
Trevor Parsons
- Minutes of the 40th Annual General Meeting
The Minutes of the 2019 meeting were agreed
unanimously. – Wendy to sign on behalf
of Kelvin.
- Matters arising from those minutes
No Matters Arising
Kelvin presented his report (copy attached).
Georgie presented the balance sheet on the screen.
Items to note:
Sales down due to Covid-19
We do have pink softy balls in stock and a supply of
Hunts Amazon and Gray Nicolls hard stoolballs
Insurance was eventually reduced to £25 per club. Anita obtained a Covid-19 relief grant of £2749
for the insurance and we passed this onto clubs. We refunded £1015 to clubs who did not
require the insurance policy for 2020. The overall loss on the insurance was
£270.
Indoor Stoolball run by Richard had broken event.
Grants – we received from Sport England £7590 in 2019
and we have spent £2000 in 2020. This is
for the coaching course. We also received
£2000 in 2019 from Wealden for Walking Stoolball and Stoolball Leaders course, there
is a small balance left from this.
- Election of Officers: Existing Post Holder
President: Kay Price
Chairman: Kelvin Speirs
Vice-Chair: Anita Broad
Hon. Treasurer: Georgie Harrison
Officers: Richard Emsley,
Genevieve Gordon, Sophie Dunn, Megan James, Lynda Mullins, Gwyn Griffith
**
the above 5 positions were voted en bloc
Proposed:
John Pritchett
Seconded:
Rick Mason
Unanimously
approved
Hon. Secretary: Wendy Heal (not standing)
No other volunteers have come forward.
This position needs to be filled soon.
Wendy has agreed to continue for a short time. Everyone was asked to advertise to their
clubs.
Wendy
has agreed to stay on as an officer,
Proposed:
Anita Broad
Seconded:
Kay Price
Unanimously
approved
Press and Publicity
Officer Vacant
The job would involve
writing press releases after events, Publishing events
- Election of New Vice
Presidents:
Existing Vice-Presidents: Ann Peck, Marion Stanbrook,
John Pritchett, Delia Saunders, Brian Johnson, Gwyn Griffith, Richard Emsley,
Peter Cheeseman, Jenny Keates, Michael
Ledwich, Trevor Parsons, Rick Mason
Proposed:
Sally Booker
Seconded: Karen Speirs
Unanimously
approved
- Election of Life Members: Existing Life Members: John and Kay
Price
- Appointment of Independent
Examiner: D A Clarke –
Proposed: Georgie Harrison
Seconded: Richard Emsley
- Open Forum
Covid-19 – Everyone
was reminded that at present no indoor stoolball can be played, and once outdoor
stoolball begins, we need to be aware of any tiered restrictions if players
travel into different counties to play.
Anita suggested that clubs
could look at playing on caged outdoor Netball courts, MUGA pitches or tennis
courts (if nets removed).
Anita will be looking at
using the remaining Wealden Grant on doing some coaching/matches using
Crowborough Netball courts in the new year.
Social Media – we have spent
time updating and scheduling posts.
Genevieve Gordon was thanked
for putting together the new polices and completing the DCMS application. Megan James and Sophie Dunn were thanked for
doing the risk assessments.
Anita was thanked for
completing the first part of the coaching programme and moving from a 2 day
face to face course to an online course.
Melissa expressed her thanks
for the road maps and would like the responsibility to continue being given to
counties to deal with their own clubs, should they not be adhering to the restrictions.
Kelvin expressed this was
Stoolball England’s preferred option unless teams continue to not adhere to the
Stoolball England rules, or the government restrictions. Melissa commented which could then be against
the law.
Melissa asked for playing
stoolball on netball courts be promoted to schools, as an additional and
perhaps different sport for them to be playing.
Schools are not allowing outside organisations to use their facilities
at present.
We have been told by some
schools that they are not allowed to play stoolball in schools until we are
listed on the DCMS back to play list.
Which we are pushing hard to get this approval.
It was agreed that we need
to do everything we can to get clubs ready for playing next season.
Coaching
Programme:
Anita reported that phase 1
has been completed
Initially this was going to
be a face to face programme 28/29 March – postponed due to national lockdown to
beginning of November, again another lockdown.
Decision taken to move to an online course which took place over 2
weekends 7th and 15 November.
The course was to train
coaches to be able to deliver a coaching course in a classroom environment.
We had 9 coaches on the
course, which was made up of a mixture of Stoolballers, owners of coaching
companies, and Council activity staff.
No-one from Kent came
forward to take part in the course, we did have coaches from East Sussex and
Surrey, no-one from West Sussex
Phase 2 – will be a practical
coaching session and is planned for the spring with outdoor sessions.
Anita will be applying for
another grant for phase 2.
To include coaching cards
with QR codes which will link to short videos showing the drills. These would
be available to everyone on YouTube.
Sophie Dunn will share the
details of a company she uses at school for the videos and links.
Stoolball England
V Rounders England Game:
The committee has decided to
postpone this until 2022, we felt we needed to concentrate on getting stoolball
up and running in 2021
Stoolball England Games:
Dates confirmed U21 and Ladies – Sunday 11 July
Over
50’s – Sunday 25 July
Venues
to be confirmed – potentially Alfold for the over 50’s and Ardingly College
These will be the
established dates going forward and we would ask all Counties and Leagues to
not organise events over these dates.
Insurance:
Richard Emsley is happy to
continue organising the insurance, he is moving away from the area, but will do
the correspondence remotely with the cheques being sent directly to Georgie.
New Committee
Members:
Would like to hear from
anyone who would like to come onto the committee or help with community events
that are in your area.
AOB and Answers
to Questions:
Willingdon Community College
have a new sports hall that they will be hiring out to public for indoor
stoolball.
Recommend using plastic
balls in the caged areas, like the cricket windball. Stoolball England have a supply of these
costing £3 each.
We need to think outside of
the box, for different ways to enable us to play, and get clubs ready for the
2021 season. Suggest doing some market research to find out what teams need to
get up and running again. New teams due
to start in 2020 Uckfield and Billingshurst. Chanctonbury are going to message
all of their teams in the new year.
The secretary job can be
split, please get in touch if you are interested in finding out more
information.
Website: Rick Mason has started rebuilding from scratch
and the replacement version will be available as soon as possible. The committee thanked Rick for all his work
on this.
If anyone is planning an
event or would like some help with ideas, please get in touch.
We have lots of ideas and formats
for running sessions for juniors, which we need to encourage.
We are happy to share events
on our social media sites. We schedule
posts and would ask for 1 week’s notice for posting.
Anita reported that some of
the coaches who attended the course found us through social media. It’s important that we encourage people to
follow us and like our posts, to further the coverage. We have one from
Worcester who works with 30 schools in his area, 1 from Dorset and 1 from
Derbyshire.
Nicole Purkis -asked to
rearrange the fixture between Coastal and Surrey. Gwyn Griffith will be in touch regarding
this.
Genevieve Gordon advised
that the rules are unlikely to be much different to the ones already in place
at present at the beginning of next year.
Some sports are not expecting changes until the autumn. We have to adapt, and we cannot know about
changes until the government announcements,
we also need to allow another couple of days for the finer detail to the
announcements before we can start working
on and release the Stoolball England ones.
Kelvin closed the meeting and asked everyone to stay safe, and looked forward to seeing everyone next year, when we can return to playing, even if it a revised version of the traditional game.
Minutes of the 41st Annual General Meeting https://www.stoolball.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/SE-AGM-Minutes-29th-November-2020.pdf
Chairman’s Reporthttps://www.stoolball.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/SE-chairmans-report-2020.pdf
Treasurer’s Reporthttps://www.stoolball.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Treasurers-Report-End-of-Year-2020.pdf
Balance Sheet – 30.09.20https://www.stoolball.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Balance-Sheet-30.09.20.pdf
Profit & Loss – 30.09.20https://www.stoolball.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Profit-Loss-30.09.20.pdf
Stock at 30.09.20https://www.stoolball.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Stock-at-30.09.20.pdf
