Secretary’s Report

At last it is raining so it seems a good time to start my report. Gerry has certainly had good weather as Captain but the results have not yet gone his way. He has mentioned this in his Captains Corner.

This year’s matches are nearly completed and again I would like to thank Tony, Brian, Rob, Gerry, Johns Pettitt and French, Doug Peter and Ian for their help. Rod Jones and Stuart Rivett were new match managers this year and both found the system easy so thanks to them as well. We do need more volunteers so if you can spare some time for this please let me know. This Match Manager process is working very well now but we still have more late withdrawals than we should. Again there were many declines, so we ask members when they fill in their picks at the beginning of the year to ensure they are available on those dates as far as they can.

One of the perks of being Secretary is that I, with the Captain, get invited to most of the other Counties dinners. We get to some interesting venues although I can now recite some of the comedians acts as I have heard them a lot. If I or the Captain cannot go I call on the committee or a match manager to go instead.

In the matches this year only 82 of our 123 members have played at least once with 7 playing in more than 10 times. This compares with 80, 85, 83 and 106 in the 3 previous years. So you can see from this that we have 41 members who are not playing which puts a greater burden on the remaining members. This shows the importance of recruiting new members on a continuing basis. We again have had 10 new members this year but there are still clubs that we have not recruited from and I ask that all members support the Club Ambassadors in trying to get current and previous Captains to join.

Next year’s matches are all fixed as you can see in this newsletter. I try to get a spread of venues for the home matches but now we only have Buckingham and Woburn in the north of the county. It is the Associations 40^th anniversary as we were formed at a meeting at Buckingham golf club on 11 April 1979. So I have booked Buckingham for our spring meeting to celebrate this and I hope you can all come for this. I have researched the founder members and will be inviting those who I can contact to come.

Should there be any past members known who wish to dispose of their Association jackets please let us know and we will make a nominal payment for the jacket if required.

Facebook

Mark Williams has set up a page for members - Association of Bucks Golf Captains - on which the Committee can share information with the members, and members can make comments. All you need to do to join, is look up the group title as above and Like the page - this will then make you a member of the group. An invitation was sent to all members earlier this year. Please let us know if you are using this and you find it useful

Rob Southerden is due to stand down from the Committee as Immediate Past Captain and we thank him for all his good work over the past 5 years.