Site updated: 30/11/11

(back to previous page)

MINUTES OF ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING OF REPTON SQUASH CLUB LTD HELD AT 19.30 TUESDAY 28^th SEPTEMBER 2009

Minutes of meeting

Date of meeting: 28 September 2009                 Venue: Repton Squash Club                  Start time: 19.30 hrs

Purpose of meeting: Annual General Meeting   

Attendees: S Evans                                         Apologies : None                             Distribution: Attendees

               M Allen                                                                                                                      Notice Boards

               J Boyden          

               A Oldbury

               S Whiting

               F Thompson

               L Watson

               I Rodgers

1  Minutes of Last Meeting

1.1 The minutes of the last AGM held on the 23^rd September 2008 were approved as an accurate record.

2 Consideration of the Accounts

2.1 The Accounts for year ending 31^st March 2009 were presented. A copy of these is included in Appendix 1.

 The Treasurer stated that a loss of just over £4,500 was shown in the Accounts. This was in line with what had been expected following the recent decline in income from membership fees, court and bar takings. However, the recent trend since the start of the year has been encouraging. The cost savings made from members voluntarily running the bar (following the retirement of Mick Davies), as well as the expected lump sum from the School (due to an administrative error with the recharge covering Sandra Davies’ wages) should see the Club’s finances in a much healthier state in next year’s accounts.

 Additionally, many of the associated costs of running the Mens and Ladies teams have, for the current season, been covered by the sponsorship monies that the Club has managed to bring in.

3 Directors’ Reports

3.1 Chairman – see Appendix 1. John Boyden proposed a vote of thanks to the Committee for their hard work on behalf of the Club.

3.2 Club and Team Squash – see Appendix 3

3.3 Coaching and Development (inc Juniors) – see Appendix 4

3.4 New Members – see Appendix 5

4 Election of Directors

The existing Committee were re-elected en-bloc. Will Hibbert’s resignation as Facilities Manager had previously been accepted by the Committee.

A new Club Captain and Facilities Manager are still required.

Position	Member
Secretary	Mr Adrian Oldbury
Chairman	Mr Simon Evans
Treasurer	Mr Ian Rodgers
New Members	Mr Martin Allen
President	Mr John Boyden

5 Any Other Business

The outgoing Committee member received a vote of thanks from the new Committee.

The meeting closed at 21.15 hrs.

Signed:

Chairman…………………………………….            Secretary……………………………………..

APPENDIX 2

Chairman’s Report

Last year I said that I believed that Repton was on the cusp of being able to move forward in a more positive manner than it had done for a while. Over the past 12 month’s I believe this has begun to happen and I also believe the things we have done to the foundation level of the club will prove this so.

One of the main things that has happened is that Mick Davies has now retired and left the club. Between the members we are now running the bar. The jury was very much ‘out’ as to whether this would be a success or not but I believe the past 4 months have been relatively stress-free for everyone helping on the bar and I see no reason to believe things will change in the near future. This trimming of costs will show up in the next set of Accounts and I am sure we will all be pleasantly surprised with the effect is has (approx £7000 saving per annum)

In addition we have changed the drinks situation at the club to ‘all bottles/cans’ with no draught beer at all. This has helped in a number of ways –

• There is now more choice to drink at the bar
• There is no maintenance of the pipes required
• There is no waste from having to pull off half a pint each night and then every week pulling through a pint when the pipes have been cleaned.
• The margin on the cans far exceeds the draught beers

So fundamentally we have made 2 very big changes to the club which should see a positive effect on the figures for the next financial year.

To move on - The main ‘undocumented’ objectives for the year were

To increase the number of members playing at the club

I’m not sure we have been particularly successful at increasing the membership levels over the past 12 months, however we do appear to have maintained the same sort of level at around the 100 mark.

That said, to date, just over 30 have already renewed so we must ensure everything possible is done to renew as many of these people during the next few weeks and then push on and attempt to get the number of playing members up to our goal of 120. We must develop a plan at the next meeting to help us achieve this.

To increase the playing participation of members

Again I’m not sure we have been particularly successful at achieving this over the last 12 months. I know court usage down over the summer months and I don’t recollect the numbers being up over the previous 6 months either. This is one area we need to address immediately and make sure we get more people playing more regularly.

It also seems to me that some kind of League System is essential for the non-Team players as a way of getting new games and meeting new players. This should be introduced with immediate effect.

To carry out major Facilities based works required

This has been achieved.

We have repaired the front wall of Court 3 recently and also changed some of the floorboards on Court 2. These were essential.

We have also continued to worked on the men’s showers and they all appear to perform adequately now.

Other points to talk about –

The Juniors and Ladies members at the club (especially the Ladies now having a Team) seem to continue to be a success story – I’ll come on to specifics in a moment about them but again we need to give them encouragement and the tools to move forward.

Sponsorship – Over the summer period, Simon Price put in a lot of hard work trying to speak to current members and also external sources about the opportunity to sponsor a board at the club. His hard work and determination proved to be a massive success and as a result of this we now have 7 new sponsors plus TL Darby who already sponsored a board have renewed.

In pounds shillings and pence this means –

Rob Flynn via Promanex is now sponsoring all our teams and has paid for all team shirts for the coming year – our tanks to Rob.

The others have agreed between them just under £2k worth of income for the coming 24 months. There is approximately £600 costs for the boards to come off this figure but even so, somewhere between £1000-1500 net profit is a fantastic result and our thanks go to Pricey for this.

Web Site – The web site has again proved to be an important portal for the club and continues to be one of the best sites in Derbyshire. More of the same for next year and our thanks to Dilys & Dave Wood for helping keep the site up-to-date.

The club has also achieved Silver Status with England Squash which is another milestone which we can be proud of. However one note of light sadness is that our application for funding via England Squash has been turned down so we will now have to look at alternative methods for sprucing the club up. This will be worked on over the next 2-3 months and hopefully soon we will see a brighter & lighter club.

In conclusion, it has been another tough year and tough decisions have had to be made but once again the signs/prospects are more positive and we seem to be a club with ‘togetherness’ and a willingness to do what’s good for the club. With this attitude I can now only see the club moving onwards and upwards.

The objectives set down by our predecessors and those that we have adopted are -

• attract new Members
• improve facilities
• improve revenue
• to maintain RSC as a viable concern

APPENDIX 3

Teams

Following the promotion of the Mens 1^st team to Division 1 last season, a decision was taken to attract a number of high-quality players to the Club with the aim of at least consolidating the position of Repton’s 1^st team in the elite division. In doing this, we have been able to strengthen the teams throughout due to the ‘knock-on’ effect of bringing in new blood at the top of the rankings.

To this end, the 2^nd team squad at the beginning of the season contained 3 of last season’s successful 1^st team. This new strength in depth led the Club to be able to campaign successfully to get the 2^nd team moved up a division into Division 3, where they have high hopes of a successful season, with the aim of achieving promotion to Division 2.

The 3^rd team have benefited in much the same way with the introduction of new blood. A couple of talented new members have further reinforced this squad and the team will be looking to gain promotion themselves this season.

After an absence of a number of years, the Ladies have again formed a new strong and committed squad and have entered a team in Division 2 of the Ladies leagues. Whilst it is likely to be a steep learning curve, the talent in the squad suggests that they could too have some success this season.

It is excellent news that Repton is once again able to field strong teams at all levels.

APPENDIX 4

Juniors

Lee Watson has continued his Friday Night coaching at the Club and the number of Juniors participating in his sessions has once again averaged between 10 and 15.

We are currently putting together a match between our Juniors and the School and hope to build upon this kind of event for the Juniors over the coming year.

That said, the Club is in need of some fresh faces to the Friday Night sessions, so if you know anyone who may be interested, please let them know about the sessions.

We have also recently decided to halve the price of Junior membership for those only playing on a Friday – down from £22/Junior to £11. We hope this will a) encourage all current Juniors to re-join, and also b) encourage new members.

APPENDIX 5

New Members

We have attempted to make improvements this year in the way that we attract and retain new members to the club.

We have, over the course of the year, placed adverts in the local press and these have directly resulted in approximately 4 new members. We have also found that some of these new members have also brought along their friends to join.

In an attempt to retain these new members, we are putting together a number of different schemes to help integrate them into the club and to meet people to arrange games with.

• Club Nights – once a month for informal games
• Internal leagues – to be reinstated for the coming season
• Handicapped competitions – making it easier for new members to get involved

In order to attract new members for the next year we have introduced a ‘Member get member’ scheme with financial reward for the introducing member. We have also discussed with Toyota the prospect of advertising the Club internally.

The 1^st team will hopefully provide top-level squash entertainment throughout the season which should encourage existing members to come down and be inspired by what they see.

We will continue to advertise and hope to reinvigorate the leagues and competitions to be more inclusive for everyone.

(back to previous page)

If you have any queries or comments regarding this site please email webmaster@reptonsquashclub.co.uk