SCBC NEWS – January 2006

Message from the New President, Bruce Crossman

 Thank you to all those members who attended our AGM on 14 December, where Ian Neill stepped down after 10 years as Club President. A formal motion of thanks to Ian was passed at the AGM but I would like to take this ooporunity to again thank him for his hard work as President. I became President of the Cluba the meeting.  Don Beer took on the role of Secretary and Roy Nixon continues as Treasurer.

A  I trust everyone had a pleasant holiday break and with recharged batteries, are ready to get back into playing bridge.  The Club is lucky to have a small team of dedicated hardworking people on the Committee that strive to make our bridge playing experience as happy as possible.  If there are any problems you feel the Club is not addressing adequately, feel free to come up and talk to me on Wednesday nights – I cannot promise action in all cases but we will do our best wherever possible.   

 The committee members in 2006 are Ken Colbert, George Stockham, Bev Crossman, Nikki Riszko.

I looked back at Ian’s goals for 2005 and am pleased to see that he left the job on a high (always the best time to go!). First, our attendance numbers grew last year and were on average over 10 tables especially in the second half of the year.  Second, the Club remains a friendly place to play bridge.  And that, frankly, is the most important objective because this, after all,  is a game – we play for fun not sheep stations! Third, as the Treasurer’s report showed, we reinvested much of the table money we took in back into the Club mainly in prizes and free bridge sessions.  Fourth, we stuck our toe in the water and ran a state level pairs event with qualifying to the Australian National Championships in Sydney through BFACT.  That was very successful – Bev and I enjoyed the ANC experience as representatives of the Club (thank you to Moira and Ken who could not attend) – so the SCBC will run a similar event again in April/May – details below).

Finally, we have improved Member services especially through our website which has received lots of positive feedback from members and has resulted in visitors and new players coming to SCBC to play.  With hard work from Ian, we also developed a handicapping system which we will use again in 2006 to try to level the playing field and give more players a chance of winning prizes. And we even trialled teams play with reasonable success – there will be more opportunities in 2006 to play this form of the game.

But there are things still to be done.

A priority will be to get some more adequate storage space at the Club so we can be more flexible in the way we run our sessions and to offer more services and facilities to members.   

I wish all members all the very best for 2006 and the best of luck in all your bridge endeavours. 

2005 Christmas Party

We had 13 tables for our Xmas Party with free drinks and nibbles. There were also some nice prizes for the winners and even a reward for total mediocrity.  And there were some lucky door prizes for newly rejoined members. 

Winners of the various prizes at the Christmas party were:

1^st place – Hashmat Ali and Richard Hills (NS); 2^nd place George Jesner/Bernie Waters

1^st place – Theo Cassidy/Pat O’Keeffe(EW), 2^nd place Kleo O’Connell/George Riszko

Most mediocre pair – with exactly 50% were Sue Coleman and Keith Huggan.

Memberships now due

We were pleased that so many members rejoined or joined the Club at the Christmas party but we would like to remind those who didn’t that annual membership fees are now due.  For those of you who are home club members of the SCBC, the total charge is $25, while non-home club members are required to pay $10.  Please contact our new Secretary, Don Beer or if he is not there, any Committee Member.

Forthcoming events

January: As many of our members will be playing in some of the events at the Summer Festival of Bridge (for details see www.abf.com.au), throughout January, we are playing Duplicate Pairs with Teams style (Butler) scoring which will allow you to get ready for this type of scoring in the Summer Festival.  No preentry required – just walk in and the best three scores of four will count to determine the overall winner (prize awarded).

April/May: Starting on Wed 26 April and going for 3 weeks, we will hold a Multi-Category Pairs Event (Open, Seniors and Mixed) with red masterpoints and prizes. Further details next month.