This report marks the end of my first full season as Chairman of the EFA. Little did I realise when I took on the post last season how much was in store for me! I want to use this Report to give you my views of how the game is going, how far some of the ambitious ideas we have been pursuing in the last year have borne fruit, and the distance we still have to travel.

The Strategy
The principal feature of the season was the launch of a new Strategy to re-vitalise the game of Eton Fives wherever it is played. Its over-riding objective is simply stated:

“to achieve a significant and sustainable increase in the number of people, both men and women, playing Eton Fives regularly wherever there are fives courts throughout the UK”

The Strategy which supports this aim sets out plans for change at every level of the game. It has been unanimously agreed by the Board and endorsed by all the Clubs.

I owe my thanks to my colleagues on the Board, and to many others in the game, who have played a central part in shaping it. I hope that everyone who sees this Report will have read it and been prepared to play their part in making it happen.

For a strategy like this to be successful, a number of key principles must be heeded:

• the window of opportunity for change is narrow and will not stay open indefinitely. The race for the future will be won only if we are swift;
• we must constantly keep up the pace, uninterrupted by pauses or ‘breathers’;
• the best allies of change are the players themselves, whose support and involvement are by far the most important ingredients of success;
• Long-term changes are about far more than just individuals and personalities. If we are to succeed, we must build a structure which must endure long after anyone’s term of office.

Where have we been going with it all so far? There is no doubt that, from the rather alarming summary I made last year, the game now has a palpable momentum behind it, as evidenced by the tremendous efforts all Clubs have made to turn out full sides in the League, by the significant progress at key schools, the record number of entries for the Kinnaird Cup week-end, the number of initiatives to widen the playing base through Friendly Fives, the huge increase in the number of ‘hits’ on the EFA website, and even the fact that for the first time the EFA’s Annual Dinner in May was significantly over-subscribed! These developments and many more are summarised in the following paragraphs.

Management
In order to keep up the pace, the following key individuals have generously undertaken to drive the various parts of the programme:

Overall Strategy - Anthony Wagg
Schools Fives - Richard Barber
Universities - James Toop
Clubs - Ronald Pattison
Friendly Fives - Howard Wiseman
Ladies’ Fives - Teresa Dunbar
The Ladder - John Cooley
Data Base - Mark Herring

My thanks are due to all of these for the commitment of time and effort they have made to achieve the tasks we have set ourselves.

The League
This accounts for about 80% of all Club fives matches played in the country at the moment, and I sense a new determination to ensure its success – in particular that so many more matches in the fixture list have been played as scheduled. In my first season as Chairman in 2003/04, no less than 30% of all League matches were cancelled across all three divisions; in the season just ended the figure was just 10%. No doubt many more matches – especially in the third division – have been played as two rather than three pair matches. But overall this represents a significant increase in the amount of fives played.

Friendly Fives
One of the central planks of the Strategy is to increase the amount of Friendly Fives as opposed to League Fives played around the country. Great initiatives are afoot here:

• At Westway, in addition to the ‘Club’ nights on Mondays and Thursdays which are now played throughout the year, a new weekly Friendly Fives initiative was launched for all comers at the beginning of the season. This has attracted between 12 to 20 people a week, many of the players returning to the game for the first time for many years. Among those who have been attracted by this excellent initiative are Old Aldenhamians, Berkhamstedians, Etonians, Rossalians, Salopians, Stoics and Westminsters, inspired by the indefatigable enthusiasm of Howard Wiseman and David Mew, the Westway Fives Manager, who run the whole event each week with their unique brand of organisational skill and informality.

• At Aldenham, the Heath Club has been re-named the Aldenham Fives Club as the resident Old Aldenhamian Fives Club and the centre for any fives player who wishes to join, and a whole programme of actions set in train by Martin Lindsay, Gordon Whitehead and their colleagues to broaden and promote the club and its links with the school and local community.

• Philip Wilson of the Windsor & Eton Club and Old Westminsters is developing with others the idea of promoting friendly fives at all the courts west of London to a much wider circle of fives players.

• In the Ladies’ game, Teresa Dunbar and Howard Wiseman will be holding four ladies’ events, one every half term over the fives playing season that would be open to all lady Fives Players.

• And a most imaginative idea has been proposed and developed by Ed Taylor with full endorsement of the Board and Clubs, to put a Ladder system in place for all who wish to play in it. This will provide a framework in which we can track down, recruit and involve new players both competitively and socially – objectives right at the heart of our strategy. Dates for the Ladder have now been worked into the Key Dates for the year ahead. If successful, as I strongly believe it will be, the Ladder will have a significant impact on the structure and amount of fives played up and down the country.

Competitions
Among our many competitions, the Kinnaird Cup is the flagship of the game, and this year I made a special appeal to every fives player to take part in the Kinnaird week-end. With untiring help from Howard Wiseman and Mark Herring in contacting people, the response was tremendous: on a glorious week-end in March, every fives court at Eton was full and flowing over with Fives players as far as the eye could see, a glistening marquee was hired as the focal point, a marvellous spirit of good fellowship centred around it, superb organisation by Mark Williams armed with his unique brand of audible authority and portable computer to calculate all the permutations, and sustained by superb catering prepared by Mark Herring’s mother herself. It was, as I hoped it would be, a real celebration of Fives, and I hope we have established a momentum here which we can sustain far into the future.

The Schools
- Masters in Charge
At the Schools, much has been happening. In February we held the first ever dinner at Eton for Masters in Charge from 14 different school, for an evening which bubbled with ideas and discussion of shared problems. That evening’s discussion is so important that we reproduce a summary of the points covered on later in this Report.

We shall be following through with a coaching week-end for Masters in Charge in the autumn at Cranleigh, the first of these we have held for about 20 years since Dale Vargas masterminded the first one at Charterhouse in the 1970s.

- The Coaching Agency
Howard Wiseman and his team continue to play a vital and enthusiastic part in coaching school fives in many parts of the country, and I must applaud in particular the huge enthusiasm with which Mark Herring has propelled Fives from a floundering to flourishing state at both Stowe and City of Norwich Schools.

- Chairman’s school visits
Having taken on the role of Director of School Fives within the Strategy, I intend in this capacity to visit the Headmasters of every Fives playing school in the country over the coming year. The clearest point emerging from my meetings so far is that the most important single ingredient for the success of Fives at a school is the support of the Headmaster; and through both meetings and correspondence, notable statements of strong personal support for Fives at their schools have been made to me by the Headmasters of Cranleigh, Dover College, Ipswich, Shrewsbury, St. John’s Leatherhead, Marlborough, St. Olave’s, Stowe, Uppingham and Oakham – and at Oakham the highlight of the season was a week-end celebration of 100 years of Eton Fives, from which there has sprung the Oakham Monday Club, a formula we want to see replicated all over the country.

Within Schools’ Fives, it has been particularly encouraging to see the rapid development of Fives played by girls. The encouragement of girls’ and ladies’ Fives is a key part of the Strategy and there are now 14 schools where the girls are active Fives players (Cranleigh, Oakham and Westminster are the latest additions) gives strong support for this, and interestingly reflects a similar development in Rugby Fives.

One particular schools initiative to which the Board attaches much importance is to expand the EFA’s own fixture list from next season to include schools where Fives has not enjoyed the same strength and prestige as at other more traditional Fives-playing schools.

My programme of school visits was rather curtailed in the Spring by illness, but my enthusiasm to carry out this programme remains undiminished, and in the coming months I shall be visiting the Headmasters of no less than a dozen further schools to encourage the strongest possible ‘top down’ as well as day-to-day commitment to the game.

Courts
On the court front, the largest-ever refurbishment project is underway at Shrewsbury, generously supported by funding from the Charitable Trust; a smaller one has been completed at Uppingham; three new courts are a-building at Mill Hill; and at Emanuel School a project is under way to renovate completely their three courts and turn them into an indoor (and therefore secure) facility.

Other Issues
- The Fives Federation
On a wider front, the EFA combined in February with the Rugby Fives Association (which also incorporates Winchester Fives) to create the Fives Federation – a unique combined fighting force of over 75 fives playing schools around the country, which will enable us to share ideas and initiatives across all three codes of the game; and will strengthen our hand in all the things about which we have separately approached outside constituencies to date – such as journalists, the Sports Council, and most importantly potential sponsors.

- The History of Fives
In my January Newsletter I referred to our intention to publish a History of Fives in 2007 in conjunction with the Rugby Fives Association. Notwithstanding very considerable efforts, it has proved difficult and time-consuming to assemble a sufficient data base of all past and present Fives players to be able to identify with any confidence the size of the potential market for this book . We have therefore decided to confine our efforts for the time being to seeking contributions from individual schools and clubs, but to make no commitment at this stage as to the form or timing with which these will be published. I shall keep members informed as matters progress on this important project.

- Sponsorship
On sponsorship we have had a ringing endorsement by HSBC of their sponsorship of the highly successful Schools Championships, which a senior HSBC executive attended at Shrewsbury; and I am in touch with HSBC to see if their support can be further widened to embrace other areas of development.

- One Wall Fives
James Toop, the current Kinnaird Cup holder and last year’s national Rugby Fives Singles Champion, who has been working with Teach First (a business and Government-sponsored scheme to place talented graduates as teachers for two years into inner city schools) has won their business plan competition and a grant of £1750 for his project to introduce “One Wall Fives” into every inner city school in London. To this end he has drawn on the experience of handball in New York, which is played on some 3000 similar courts there, with outstanding success at introducing sport to schools and bringing down crime rates; and he has set up the Inner City Fives Association here to drive the initiative. This imaginative and exciting development is described in more detail elsewhere in this Report.

Black Spots
These are all tremendously positive things for our game. As with every story there are areas of concern:

• At Wellington College, in spite of direct appeals from me to the Headmaster, they have taken a hammer to their fives courts and smashed them to pieces – an example of monumental vandalism which deprives all future generations of Wellingtonians of the chance of becoming fFives players. It is a wake up call to all schools as to what can happen if their facilities ever become under-used.
• At the Leys School in Cambridge, notwithstanding meetings which Rodney Knight and I have had with the Headmaster and their Bursar, and the strongest representations from Cambridge’s current Captain Nick Gill, the school has now decided to turn their two Eton Fives courts into a climbing wall. This is a matter heavy with destiny for the whole future of fives at Cambridge University (who have virtually no other courts on which to play) as well as at the Leys School itself.
• And I must also underline my concern at the number of leading Clubs which can no longer raise the numbers to make up a match side. This aptly encapsulates why every one of the areas targeted by our Strategy is so important to the future of the game.

The EFA Dinner
The fourth EFA Annual Dinner took place at Eton in May, attended by 52 people, a record. Half of these were under the age of 40, including nearly all the winners of our main trophies, to whom these were formally presented during the evening. Indeed the dinner was so well subscribed that some who applied too late had to be turned away for lack of space. The event was splendidly organised by Michael Constantinidi and Mark Williams, and with the level of support it attracts has now become a central part of the annual Eton Fives calendar.

EFA Website
The EFA website is now just over 5 years old, and has become a vital tool of the game. Visits to the site (someone browsing a number of pages in one session) during 2004/05 are up by a remarkable 44% compared with the same period last year.

The site is increasingly becoming a resource for active players, as much as a source of information about the game and the EFA, both for players and interested non–participants alike. Thanks are due in full to Mike Fenn for his sterling work, in both keeping the site up–to–date with results and reports, and in frequently adding interesting new content to encourage return visits.

Subscriptions
As the Annual Accounts show, the EFA’s finances are at best slim compared with the many calls for our support for court renovation, coaching and development. This makes it essential that we do receive in full from all members the £20 subscriptions which membership of the EFA entails. This is the third time that I am appealing to all EFA members to support the game by sending your Direct Debit forms to the Hon. Treasurer, Martin Powell. Incredibly some 80 members still have not done so; they are therefore failing to support all the hard work and commitment of so many people to advance the health of Eton Fives.

The Annual Report
This Annual Report will be the last one which will be completely produced by our Secretary, Mike Fenn. In its content, presentation and interest, it is a publication which is truly a credit to our game. This has been due to the Herculean efforts of Mike, who for eighteen years has been the guiding spirit behind every facet of this report. He now feels that the time has come to relinquish his role as Editor. The Board has decided therefore that from 2006 our Annual Report (and also the Chairman’s January Newsletter) will be a joint publication with the Rugby Fives Association under the banner of the new Fives Federation which we created this year. In this way we shall have a single publication for the whole Fives-playing community, we shall be able to spread the enormous load involved, and at the same time promote to the wider world a more identifiable face of the game of Fives as a whole.

The Board
I am fortunate to chair an Association whose Board is composed of such dedicated and tireless people as the present one. I thank Alex Illingworth, Anthony Brunner and Tony Walters, who retired during the year, for their wise guidance and advice on many aspects of our strategy; and also Teresa Dunbar who retires at the AGM after three years on the Board and whose ideas and initiatives, especially with regard to Ladies’ Fives, have been appreciated by everyone. The Board has been delighted to invite Anthony Wagg and Steve Plummer to join, and they will be formally proposed at the AGM in November.

We are traversing a period of great change in the game, and the support and encouragement of every Board member has been a source of the greatest inspiration to me as we do so. I must again add – in words too inadequate for the purpose – my immense gratitude to Martin Powell and Mark Williams for their work as Treasurer and Competitions organiser respectively. And to Mike Fenn I know I speak for the entire population of Eton Fives players in expressing my deep thanks for his knowledge, resilience, drive and courtesy in managing all that has to be done to keep our game moving forward to the destination we have set for it, and to which we have made such encouraging progress in 2004/05.

R.P.F.B. – June 2005

Chairman's Report 2004-2005 by Richard Barber
Finalised 11th January 2006 : Mike Fenn
efa@etonfives.co.uk

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