Veterans League Half-Year Meeting report

Veterans League

The Veterans League holds two General Meetings year. The Annual General Meeting in February and the Half-Year Meeting in October. The latter one this year being held on Thursday 22 October although you would never hear about it if the League had their way, with no mention on their website before or after that date about the business and decisions reached. So they should be thankful that I am providing this report on some of the business conducted at the meeting but they won’t be, because as I put the article together it became clear to me that this report will turn into a rant.

First of all, the headlines from that meeting:

• Past practice has been for some Division 4 matches in the Veterans 6-Man League to be played on Fridays or Monday mornings, where a club has three or four teams in the League, those being Brockholes and Thongsbridge. These matches will now be played on Monday afternoons with two matches being played on the same green at the same time. It is good to see other leagues eventually learning from the example set by the Winter League. Presumably that still means no more than four jacks on the green at any one time which will extend playing time. It is unclear what the position is regarding Denby Dale who also start at 1030 on a Monday.
  

• The Management Committee announced that they are finding it difficult to run a raffle on their competition Finals Days of which there are 11. They have therefore decided that the responsibility for those fundraising matters will be passed to the host club who will also benefit from the net profit of such raffles. This tells me that the League is being run by folk who cannot even run a raffle!
  

• Bowlers shouldn't assume that the League will be running the usual quota of eleven competitions next season unless they recruit a new League & Competition Secretary. Paul English has stood down from both positions and the League has had no luck in finding a replacement or two. It was stated that if they cannot fill the position of Competition Secretary then the competition programme will be severely cut back to just four, they being the John Hoyle Trophy, Rosebowl, Pairs Shield and Lower Division Trophy. The competitions that only COVID has managed to stop before but will be lost from the 2027 programme will be Over-70s KO, Over-80's KO, Over-70's Pairs KO. I am uncertain about arrangements for the team competitions in the 2027 season. Perhaps it would be helpful if the League clarified that position and then incorporated that decision into setting the League fees.
  

THE RANT Running competitions has never been seen as a priority by the League. It seems to me that the present League hierarchy values a healthy bank balance as more important than actually bowling. Their measure of success is directly related to their bank balance. Why else do they sit on a reserve of over £17,000 in the bank. Yet when they talk about replacing the reduced income lost to no raffle income, they talk of raising the annual League subscription fees to clubs. Why do they need more than £17,000 in the bank? What do they intend doing with all that money?

I cannot follow the logic in all that. Surely if they haven't recruited a League and Competition Secretary then they won’t be paying out honoraria payments for those two positions amounting to £1,300? They also won’t be paying out the same amount to competition winners as they did last year when they reached a total of £3,640. Now they have progressed to a system where the less they bowl the more money this League makes. It amazes me that such a profit-focused organisation as the Veterans League cannot find a Management Committee member to run a raffle or two. Bowling becomes a hindrance and distraction to their perceived major role of boosting the cash reserves but they haven't a clue what they want to spend it on. I could certainly help them with that by suggesting some schemes that would benefit local bowling and not the League's bottom line, so they probably won't be interested.