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Since our last meeting at the beginning of March I have attended two regional meetings, one in April and one in June. Both meetings were at Notts Ladies Golf Club in Hollinwell.
Our April meeting was attended by Sue Whittaker, the Chairman of the Management Board. She reported that a joint committee of five members of EWGA and five members of EGU has been set up to discuss the possibilities of a merger. Some of the points presently being discussed are:
- is this what everyone wants
- governance
- gender balance or position on merit
- a suggestion that there should be a shadow board plus a period of settling in before a merger is finalised
Apparently, of the eighty four member countries of the international golf federation only four countries still have a separate union. Following on from this and discussions at our last meeting as a point of interest, I am aware that there are presently twenty nine county golf partnerships in place with two more in discussion.
As you will probably already know the EWGA Trust golf day had to be cancelled due to a lack of entries. However, the Trust is now raising money by selling raffle tickets for the un-used prizes and also by selling the Trust Diary, which is similar to the previous LGU Diary. Raffle tickets are available from me today and are £5 a book and there are a minimum of two books for each delegate. I believe each club should now have received order forms for the diary which can also be ordered on line. An initial order of 5000 has been made with ten allocated for each club, so first come first served.
A voting procedure working group has been set up to examine ways in which the voting processes for AGMs and EGMs can be speeded up as well as be fair voting processes. The working group is made up of representatives from each region. Jill Sly from Brocton is the Midlands North Representative.
During 2010 there will be a new scratch medal competition with the final being held in 2011. This is to be run with the new EWGA Medal Competitions. With regard to the new EWGA Medals I have been asked to gather some feedback from you as to what you think as we draw towards the end of year one ( I will return to this at the end of my report).
Further, I have also been asked to establish how many clubs have internet access (see board being passed around). This is to enable EWGA to assess whether it will be feasible to have a Central Handicap Database as there will need to be an eighty per cent take up for it to go ahead. Such a system would mean that handicap records are immediately updated when playing in away competitions and those running competitions would be able to establish a competitor's handicap.
I have been asked to re-iterate again that EWGA are still going along with the R&A policy of not using DMDs in their tournaments.
Clubs are obviously presently planning their calendars for next year. Could you please encourage your club to run an Australian Spoons Qualifier as this event would appear to be losing its popularity.
The Australian Spoons is an 18 hole Stableford Foursomes competition for Bronze Division. The 2010 final is in Leicestershire on 7th June.
An EWGA newsletter is regularly sent out to those members who have registered on line. At the moment only 2.5% of the total number of EWGA members are registered. So please could you go back to your clubs and ask your members to go on the EWGA website
( www.englishwomensgolf.org) and submit their email address to receive the newsletter. The email address will not be passed on to anyone else and obviously the bigger the distribution base of the newsletter the more that can be charged to advertisers.
Fundraising for next years rules seminars for observer referees has been agreed. Application forms for those interested in becoming an observer referee can be downloaded from the EWGA website. A test paper will be sent out to applicants and the best three scores from each county will be invited to a seminar in March 2010. The observer referee qualification lasts for three years. Please encourage anyone who you think may be interested in doing this to apply.
I have been advised to inform you that each county and club should have their own gender policy in place before the law requires one. Staffordshire have already adopted the EWGA gender policy. This policy can be viewed on the EWGA website but basically states that competitors must be of female gender and have been female at birth or have had the female gender assigned.
It has been approved that the minutes of the regional meetings, possibly in an abbreviated form, will be available on the EWGA website in the near future. |
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