“NE14Hockey League” Chairman’s Report to

the East AGM – 9^th July 2009

The League AGM and Presentation Day event was well attended this year, especially as their league manager reminded all the League winners, and some people thought they were attending this AGM!

In the years when clubs paid their entry and received their fixtures at the AGM, it was much better attended, but with more modern communications, but more and more teams to accommodate, this is no longer necessary and the fixtures are now available on the website, and with so many different things to pay and to forget to pay, that is all done by invoice. Although so many things have been made easier for clubs in the leagues, it is always disappointing that one or two clubs insist on making deadlines something to get as close to as possible rather than something to be got out of the way. For example with a week to the entry deadline nearly 30 clubs hadn’t even entered their teams for next season and 3 took it to the final hours on the last day. I hope that when it comes to entry fees we don’t again have the sight in October of a club chairman driving over a hundred miles to deliver a fine in cash to keep his club’s points loss to only SIX, and that every club will actually read the invoice and send the right money to the right person. This would be a first for some clubs as Margaret could testify!

Yellow / Red cards – During this last season we had 1104 Yellow cards in the men’s leagues and 114 in the women’s leagues. We had 38 Reds or MMO’s in the men’s leagues, and 2 in the women’s leagues. This may sound like a lot of yellow, and is, but bearing in mind that a third of those are in the Premier league where the competition is very fierce, it is less than one in every 4 games played. The increase in suspensions for multiple cards did not seem to reduce the numbers of cards, and we voted on an easing of that rule.

After the traumas and vast amount of time spent an appeal against a league decision last year, their were none this time, so we could concentrate more easily on running the leagues for the vast number of clubs who stick to the rules and make the most of the service we provide.

After years of being “sponsored” by the teams that couldn’t be bothered to avoid fines to the tune of up to £2400 in the best/worst year, we were very pleased to say that the league is in its second year of a 3 year sponsorship deal with NE14Hockey a company formed by Simon Buckley, the son of ex-League Chairman – Steve Buckley – use the website for your hockey needs, but NOT to say rude things about umpires or the league committee!

For a year now, we have had a rule that all umpires are nominated by clubs on the East website, that they are all Level 1 and are all fully insured. This has been very successful with very few clubs not fully complying. It seems logical to me that if you are asking someone to umpire for you each (or indeed ANY) weekend, then the club should pay the membership of the County Association for all its umpires. This would mean much easier administration by the County HUA’s, and only umpires not from a club having to join separately. When we finally got Herts & Beds to realise that we would support them if they threatened sanctions for clubs not supplying umpires to the pool, as we do for all Umpire’s Associations, the HBHUA pool suddenly grew from 9 to 26, and the appointments secretary wondered how he’s going to keep all his umpires happy. This has meant a bit of cajoling of umpires to “help out” the non-compliant clubs, but hopefully more umpires will come forward.

We are pleased to congratulate both Harleston Magpies and Cambridge City on their elevation to the National League without the inconvenience of play-offs, and also all 35 other league winners in the East Leagues.