Minutes - Commitee Meeting 10 December 2017

Venue: Last Drop Village Hotel, 10^th December 2017

Present: Fred Swarbrick, John Powell, Ian Cosens, Greg King, Andy Thompson, Paul Whiston, Jon Daldry Peter Rhodes, Craig Hine & Sara Shackleton.

Apologies: Reg Robinson & Tommy Hughes

Meeting opened 16h40

Matters Arising

None. Minutes of the previous meeting (7^th June 2017 – Glossop RUFC) were passed as a true record.

Finance

Greg presented the Leagues Financial Statement demonstrating a steady performance in comparison to the income/expenses of the 2016/17 season.  The League bank account continues to display a solid and healthy position. The Benevolent Fund was also healthy – with no outgoing payments having been made during the current season. It was shared that the Leagues financial contribution to the Annual Presentation Dinner would now be accounted for within the current Financial Year.

Sponsorship

The League is now named the ‘Halbro North West Leagues’ with Halbro as the sole overall sponsor. Ian Cosens confirmed that sponsorship remains in a healthy position with all league divisions having individual sponsors. Ian also confirmed that the Halbro Voucher System is still available to all current playing teams in the league - allowing the club/team to purchase a new set of Team Shirts and enjoy a £100 discount on the purchase price. This is limited to one set of shirts per team. Fred announced that following successful discussions with Robinsons Brewery they would, from the start of the 2018/19 season, be sponsoring all cup competitions for the next 3 years. Fred extended the Committees thanks to both Brooke Edgley Specialist Technical Services & LBS for their support over the last years.

Finals

Finals day for the 207/18 season is confirmed as 5^th May 2018. Burnley RUFC were already established as one venue after a most impressive visit to their Club last season. Further to this and on the receipt of excellent applications for this year’s other finals day venue, representatives from the committee visited the respective clubs in order to finalise the nomination. The Committee would like to extend their thanks to those clubs for the hospitality offered and also to those who gave up their time to accommodate the visits. After careful consideration and discussion Widnes RUFC were awarded the remaining spot. The Committee appreciate that a lot of our Clubs fill their diaries early with events and with this in mind have nominated Oldham RUFC as one venue for the 2018/19 season with the other venue to be confirmed early next season.

Division 5 South

For the 2017/18 season only 8 of the original 177 teams had left the leagues, unfortunately 3 of the 8 were from Division 5S. Due to these unavoidable circumstances Division 5 S was scrapped form 25/11/7. Through communications with the teams involved and the RFU RDO team the following actions were taken:

• Newcastle (Staffs) 2 into 4 South.
• Tyldesley 3 into 4 North.
• Helsby 2 into 5 West.
• There were spaces available in these Leagues.
• From 9/12/17 Marple 3 joined 5 East taking over the fixtures of the departed Eccles 3

Representatives from the remaining teams met with Dave Westhead and the RFU Development team to set up a Merit table structure outside of the Leagues. They will be using some of the fixtures already organised by the Leagues but will generally organise their own Fixture structure.

Rule Amendments

All clubs to note that any suggested/proposed changes or additions to the current League Rules must be submitted as Proposals for the AGM.

League Website

It was agreed that the current website format is now dated and with the increased use of tablets and mobile smart phones was no longer user friendly. This combined with potential security and accessibility issues confirmed the Committee’s decision to develop a new website. Additional benefits include links to the RFU website and single point of results recording.  Work on this will start in early 2018 with updates on the transition being posted at regular intervals.

Club Contacts

The current list of club contacts is now very much out of date. In order to resolve this matter it s requested that all club webmasters ‘spring clean’ their contacts through the ‘Admin’ tool on the website. In addition to this the Code of Conduct form for 2018/19 season will include a mandatory Contacts section for completion and submission.

Meeting closed 18h35