Club AGM Highlights Urgent Need For Support
By ATTC Webmaster on Jul 13, 2023 with Comments 0
The 83rd Annual General Meeting of Ashford Table Tennis Club took place at the club on Thursday 6th July 2023.
Whilst the club is in good health in terms of its membership, activities and recent achievements, our Chairman, Dave Wilson, made yet another plea for new blood to help run the club.
Below is Dave’s annual report in full (alternatively you can view it here in PDF):
Firstly, welcome all to the 83rd AGM, thank you for making the effort to attend.
Part 1
Lorna Slifkin
Overall it has been a good year, albeit tinged with sadness when we lost Lorna Slifkin at the end of last August. Lorna had been Match Secretary for the club for a considerable number of years, amongst many other roles undertaken in the table tennis world. The club were very well represented at the funeral.
WR Sports
The club have been represented on the board of WR Sports who run this site and also Ashford Sports Club, who own both this and the Short Lane site. The land adjacent to the tennis courts is still being used by Esso for the Southampton to Heathrow new pipeline. Following completion of that it is still hoped that development will be permitted.
As far as WR Sports are concerned the big work of course has been the extension – which will provide additional facilities for the benefit of us all. There’s obviously been an inconvenience for our entry / exit from the hall but that should not be for too much longer. We are going to gain some storage space which will mean we can have less tables around the perimeter whilst playing.
ATTC Coaching
The coaching at the club has continued to increase since the appointment of Jhun on a full time basis. This is in addition to the other sessions organised and run inside and outside the club by Graham Outrim.
One of those who has received considerable coaching at the club (plus elsewhere) is Oscar Nikolli who, we were delighted to learn, was selected for the England Futures Squad. It is a great achievement by Oscar whose development has been quite incredible over a couple of years.
League of the Year
Another great achievement during the year was at the TTE Pride of Table Tennis awards ceremony where
the Heathrow League won the League of the Year award. This was devised by Mark Roper as a way for players who had not previously played in competitions to gain experience in a ‘semi competitive’ environment. Mark, along with counterparts from 3 other clubs, run matches at the different locations. Over 100 juniors have played, many in their first competitive game.Ashford Super Singles
The Ashford Super Singles competition was also introduced by Mark to give players of all abilities the chance to have competition against players of a generally similar standard and this has proved very popular. 69 players have taken part in the first 8 rounds. The plan is to continue year round, fitting in alongside existing Staines League, Summer league and Ladder league.
Membership
We had circa 300 members at the end of 2022-23:
- 73% Male, 27% Female
- 30% Juniors, 34% Seniors, 36% Adults
- 138 people have taken advantage of the early bird offer to renew for 2023-24 before June 30th
New Joiners Session
Designed to provide a place for adults new to the club to meet others and work out how the club works, this session runs every Sunday between 6-8pm and has regular attendance of around 16 people.
Local & British Leagues
As far as on-table matters for local leagues / British leagues etc then these have all been reported on the website and to reduce the length of this meeting I will not repeat again.
Hall Extension Plan
This has stalled somewhat as the fund raiser we had on-board has decided he cannot now assist and will need to be picked up again when possible. Hence, we are looking for people with time and energy to
manage the funding applications.Assistance to the Committee
There has been assistance to the committee from numerous members including the captaining of the
various teams at all levels; running competitions within the club; organising the table plans; making sundry repairs as necessary – these are just a few examples and I’d like to thank all those who have positively contributed.I am reluctant to name all individually for fear of missing someone. Having said that I would
like to make a special mention of Gary Stevenson who has undertaken numerous tasks quietly and very efficiently. If you were not aware, all the table lights were replaced with LEDs earlier this year. This was carried out over a number of weeks. Whilst this required a large initial outlay, the longer-term benefits, especially with the increased electricity bills, should show a considerable saving on the previous lighting.Part 2
Now, looking forward into the current year, I have some sobering points to make.
Table Lights
Everyone in their homes has been impacted by the soaring energy bills and we in the club are of course no different. There is an energy package for all the clubs arranged by WR Sports but of course upon the expiry of the last deal the cost of lighting and heating the club has soared.
To give a simple illustration the average electricity bill for a quarter as shown on the accounts for the past year was £2350. The bill to ATTC for the quarter April / May / June this year amounted to just over £5100.
Accordingly, there is little choice but to raise the cost of the lights from £1 for 30 minutes (which they have been for as long as I can remember) to £1 for 20 minutes. This change will be implemented at some point in the not-too-distant future. Whilst this will obviously not be popular any other suggestions for how we can make up the shortfall would be welcome.
Request for Additional Committee Members
Secondly, I mentioned at the last 2 AGMs plus on other occasions about the running out of bandwidth of the committee, who have all worked hard for the benefit of the club and its members and I’d like to personally thank them all for their contributions.
Kamal Shah is moving on from his post as Youth Development Officer as his focus is now on other sports. We are pleased however to welcome Warren Kandasamy who is going to take up that mantle.
Greg Kendall has been looking to hand over the reins of running the website for quite a while now. We thought we had someone to take it on, but it didn’t materialise.
We’ve not had a Secretary since Martin Webb sadly had to step down through ill health.
Steve Eames has been the Club Treasurer for 26 years, a phenomenal stint of service, but he feels the time is right to pass on the baton. We will need to appoint someone who can work alongside Steve in a transitional period over the next year.
Finally, on this subject if I am re-elected later in this meeting then this next year will be my last as well and I will need to step back at the latest at the AGM next year.
Very simply we need new blood to run the club. Without it I have to wonder how it will function. This report will be sent out to all members shortly with particular emphasis on the last 2 sections.
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