Annual Report

At the end of each season, when most players turn their thoughts away from Fives to cricket and other summer pursuits, the administrator, wearing his editor hat, starts to think ‘Annual Report’.

A major input is competition reports. If all has gone well during the season most will have already been received from tournament organisers and posted to the EFA website. These can easily be extracted and adjusted as necessary ready for the printer. On-going work throughout the season is the adjustments to membership particulars – addresses, telephone and e-mail - all ably undertaken on a monthly basis by our Membership Secretary Michael Duncan. You may be surprised to hear that the number of adjustments including insertion and deletion of members averages some eighteen changes every month!

Much of May and June is taken up obtaining print quotations; commissioning reports and articles; selecting historical and articles of general interest; appealing to advertisers; considering photographs and artwork; and preparing first copy for the printer. Each year adjustments are required to the index sections; members responsibilities; EFA fixtures; club and school directories; competition results; and membership particulars.

July sees the receipt of final copy from contributors and by the end of the month and early August we are at the proof reading stage. This is usually undertaken with a wet towel, a liberal supply of alcohol, moored up somewhere against a canal towpath and preferably on a day of rain so as not to waste precious summer cruising time. It as at this stage that consideration is given to report and article layout which is finalised at the second proof reading stage.

September is when the report finally comes together and after several last minute panics and adjustments is ready for printing, delivery and distribution. The latter onerous task is undertaken every year by Derek Whitehead utilising address labels prepared by Mike Duncan.. All in all some one hundred hours work and probably well on the way to twice that figure after taking into account the work undertaken by all those who have kindly contributed to production of the report.

Website

Maintenance of the website is undoubtedly the most time consuming of the administration tasks- see separate report.

Membership

Individual membership creeps ever nearer to the magical six hundred mark. The past twelve months has seen the ‘election’ of thirty-five new members, one more than in the previous year, with a thirty-seven percentage success rate of those approached. One pleasing sign is that more former student members, having completed their time at University, are now signing up as full members.

Most regular players and supporters of Eton Fives are now members and in the future we will need to rely more heavily on recruiting school leavers and converting student membership into full membership. In order to maintain the momentum I would ask all Club Secretaries to play their part to persuade new members to support the EFA by taking out an individual membership.

School Fives

Howard Wiseman’s Coaching Agency, with the utilisation of gap year students, helps to ensure the game continues to flourish at many schools where otherwise the game might have gone into terminal decline. Under one recent initiative Emanuel made a tour to Oakham and Uppingham and a trip to Rutland is also planned for Lancing College. Two girls and one boy from Lancing played in the Northern Championships, and an article has appeared in the local press at Lancing about the Lancing girls Fives, with a photograph of the main two players.

The new sixteenth court at Eton was dedicated on 10th May to the memory of Martin Shortland-Jones and David Guilford. Those present included David Guilford, Anne Shortland-Jones, Michael Constantinidi (Chairman of the EFA), Mike Fenn (Secretary), Mark Williams (Master-in-Charge of Fives at Eton) and Alistair Ennever (Keeper of Fives). There has been a development in Fives at Uppingham. Brooklands House has brought back into use its two Fives courts. Fives is again being played on two of the main school courts under the guidance of Seth Bolderow, the newly appointed master-in-charge. Improvements have been made to the Lancing College Courts and replacement courts are planned for Stowe, Charterhouse and Mill Hill, all likely to lose their existing courts as part of redevelopment plans. On the down side an e-mail received from Clive Nicklin states “Further to your list of courts in England, I believe, reading a message on Friends Reunited, that the court at Thomas Alleyne's High School, Uttoxeter has recently been demolished. (If true, this is a pity. Some friends and I used the court while at school in the mid 1970's and enjoyed the game very much).”

Club and University Fives

Howard Wiseman has taken over from Mark Herring responsibility for coaching at Westway. Niifio Addy has taken over as Secretary of the Old Cholmeleians; Courtney Friend the Old Edwardians; Nick Jones Lancing Old Boys; Nick Gill Cambridge University (Captain - Dexter Davies); and Hedi Young Oxford University (Captain – Simon Randall).

With the loss of Richard Black, moving to Paris, Lancing Old Boys may well struggle to raise sides pending the arrival of new players from the College. The Old Carthusians continue to do well under the guidance of Ronald Pattison and are to enter a second side into the League for 2003-2004. A further success has been achieved by the enthusiasm of Jurgen Hutter (Stoics) and Sam Basu (Reptonians) in taking the combined Reptonian/Stoics team to second place in Division 3 of the League.

The Zuoz Fives Club has elected a new board and established a website , whilst the Jesters had a busy season with a number of younger members joining the club, which is all to the good. Meanwhile Ronald Pattison, a hard working Jester for many years has set up a very successful turn-up-and-play at the Westway Sports Centre on Monday evenings at which a number of Jesters will always be found.

Congratulations to Tom Dunbar for obtaining the sponsorship of Pol Roger for the Varsities Match and for the superb dinner, organized by Mark Williams, following a successful Oxford win. Winners of the Universities Championship was an all Oxford affair Oxford 1 (Sanjaya Ranasinghe and Hedi Young) defeating Oxford 2 (Patrick Hennesey and Ewan Thompson) in the final. Sadly there was no Under 25 Championships this year. Tom Dunbar (Oxford) and Robin Mason retained the Kinnaird Cup defeating James Toop (Oxford) and Matt Wiseman in the final. James Toop and Matt Wiseman also ran out winners in the London and Northern Championships. British Universities Rugby Fives Championships - James Toop (Oxford) won the singles and doubles championships, the latter with J Richardson. Whatever has happened to Cambridge?

Advertising and support

The generosity of those members and friends who agreed to take advertising space in this report has helped to mitigate the production costs. Their contribution is much appreciated as is the valuable support I have received from Club Secretaries, Masters-in-Charge, members of the EFA Board, the Eton Fives Charitable Trust, Howard Wiseman and many others during the past twelve months.

M.R.F.



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Administrator's Report 2002-2003 by Mike Fenn
Finalised 3rd September 2003
efa@etonfives.co.uk

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