The Club held its 2022 AGM at Westminster Park Community Centre on Friday, 11 March.
The Chairman, Jayne Taylor, had already circulated her annual report. The club remains keen to widen participation and improve continuity in managing the club’s activities and there is an open invitation to all club members to help as volunteers and to contribute their skills and experience by joining the committee. She re-iterated the club’s interest in encouraging recent members who been enjoying golf croquet to try their hand at association croquet. There is also continuing interest in options for levelling or flattening the croquet lawns and a working group is being re-constituted to evaluate possibilities. Overall, the club is looking forward to another busy season. There is a significant increase in the number of NW Federation league matches in the calendar and the club is preparing to take part in two more national competitions, one for level play golf croquet and possibly one for short lawn association croquet, in addition to the club’s established participation in an advanced association croquet and two handicap association croquet competitions.
The Treasurer, Trevor Farrell, reported that the club’s finances remained in sound condition. The club’s reserves are enabling it to upgrade its stock of mallets and other equipment and, as the Chairman mentioned, to reconsider possibilities for levelling or flattening the croquet lawns and other improvements. It was proposed that subscription rates remain unchanged at last year’s levels. This was agreed by the meeting and cheques for the new season are now payable. Payments can also be made by on-line bank transfer. For security reasons, bank details are not being publicised but can be obtained from the Treasurer.
The club’s officers – Chairman, Secretary and Treasurer – and other members of the committee were willing to continue in their roles and were re-elected. In order to sustain the club’s vitality and openness to new ideas, and to make the various roles more attractive to newcomers, there was broad agreement that it is desirable to limit periods in office though without prescribing specific time limits.
Weekly playing arrangements for the coming season were discussed. The aim is to maintain a reasonable balance between playing times for both forms of the game and between roll-up sessions, when there is flexibility to turn up and play a particular form of the game, and personally arranged games of any form which can be booked using the lawn booking system. In the light of these considerations, some modifications and additions to weekly playing arrangements are being introduced this year and will continue to be kept under review by the committee.
The club is in continual contact with the Council over regular lawn maintenance, the upgrading of the lawn watering system to improve availability and reliability during periods of dry weather, and revarnishing the external wooden cladding of the clubhouse which was ten years old last year.
The lawns are due to be marked out and the hoops installed in week commencing Monday, 21 March, ready for the start of the new season and play to commence from Sunday, 27 March.