AGM Captains Report 2017-18

Away Tours
The venue for the Diamond challenge between Easterns and Botswana was moved from Mafekeng to Sun City and this
proved to be a winner, the trip was oversubscribed as opposed to Rod Williams having to beg for participants, with people
already wanting to book spots for the next challenge on 7/8 July 2018
The Quadrangular and LES trophy was consolidated and the Glenbrynth Pentangular challenge created. The letter of
understanding was not followed by the organizing province resulting in two of the five provinces only fielding half of their
contingent, however this will be sorted out this year with Rod Williams agreeing to stay on another year to ensure that this
tour in particular is a success and fair to all as was originally intended. The venue at Highland Gate has been secured for
25/26 August 2018 and Easterns accommodation reserved.
Fielding full teams for the Highveld trophy has also become a problem and future organizers should possibly look at
combining this with future events where the three teams are involved.
The mystery Tour remains very popular due to Rod’s excellent organizing.
Awards and Prizes
It is Thanks to Derick Lindsay being so organized that we are able to have quick and effective prize giving’s with quality
prizes. A decision was taken to rather allocate the money spent on draw prizes and bad play to the deserved winners.
Derick will also be co ordinating our 40 th anniversary in May and we ask you to support him.
Tempest IKO Swindle
Europcar will in future be sponsoring this competition. A great big Thank you to Peter Retief from Europcar and Tempest
Car Hire for their continued sponsorship of the main prize which includes a 4 Night stay at a Southern Suns hotel, 4 days
car hire and 2 return air tickets besides the R3150.00 for winning the pool. All 16 Pool winners received R3150.00
Magazine
I would like to thank Jack Herzfield for the time and effort he has put into editing our magazine for the past 15 years
however due to ill health Jack has been forced to take a break. This year we did away with the hard copy as a cost saving
exercise (+- R6.5K per month) and due to it being an unnecessary duplication, thus only having to pay for the formatting.
We have now gone a step further and purchased our own improved package with the only fee being a minimal annual
license which now allows us to do the magazine in house a saving of +- R34.5K per year.
National Tournament
We were allocated 41 spots which we were originally able to fill plus a reserve however due to various reasons we ended
up with 38. Easterns ended 2 nd overall – a great result for an inland team at a coastal nationals.
Although the building of the altar which went missing has been completed quite a while back we are still trying to collate
information by means of old magazines and photos due to the engraver’s hard drive who did the last upgrade having
crashed, however it has been decided to go ahead with the info available and updating when available and together with
the cloth remains a work in progress.
Easterns remains sound in all departments although the dwindling rounds per game is disturbing, it has been an absolute
pleasure working with the fantastic committee, that served the club this past year and to whom I am most greatful.
Although there were late changes they have made it easy for the incoming committee to pick up the ball and run.
Congratulations to Mark and his incoming committee you can count on my support and assistance should it be required.
Yours in Nomads
Mike Fick
Captain 2017