Please find the President's Report for 2012 as read by Mr Ian McDuie at the Annual General Meeting:
Since the last AGM, we have had an eventful year.
In November 2011 we had a NSW Polo stand and a wooden horse at Equitana in Sydney which enabled us to expose our sport to a lot of other horse enthusiasts and to network with & learn from other horse sports – this was a budgeted expense so thanks to Adam Meally for providing his wooden horse and to all those who assisted to set up and man the stand over the 3 days.
More exposure was achieved, at least for our valuable NSWPA trophies, when they were featured in the Great Gatsby film, for which we received a fee of $4000, so special thanks to Suzie Ruse for her great negotiation skills.
In January new insurance brokers, Affinity, were appointed by APF and now all players have basic level of personal accident insurance mostly negotiated by Amanda Jansen of APF, and as an important benefit to NSW players we have elected to absorb this cost for at least the first 2 years.
Despite some concerns with the rain and the state of the ground, the Australia vs South Africa Test Match Day in March all came together in the end and resulted in a record gate taking after the change to a Saturday date, however some expenses ran out due to the visitors being here for over 2 weeks. We need to leverage off the Test Match to gain more awareness of polo at other times of the year. As usual the generosity of horse lenders made it all possible and the Windsor Committee had the venue looking well.
Also in March NSWPA attained recognition from NSW Sport & Rec with a $10,000 grant for Sports Development for this year and next. Special thanks due to Jenny Herz for all the work put in to collate the information from the Strategic Plan and complete the submission for this important result.
Due to the concern of the Board and a number of players, especially from the country clubs, about the poor entries in the Dudley Cup, it was decided to try a change of date to April on the weekend immediately following the Test match. This turned out to be a huge success, the willingness to embrace change, the innovation shown, and effort by all involved resulted in the highest level of polo seen at state level for some time. It was fantastic to see the younger generation taking the reins, organizing the tournament & giving players a week of polo and time to network / socialize. While special thanks are due to the Committee of Simon Walker, Robert Archibald, Dick Doolin and Adam Marshall, all the members of the Board got behind this to assist with various tournament duties, with the result that we not only had a great tournament but also raised some money to offset the costs.
Also in April the first Southern Junior Polo School, modelled on the successful Scone formula, was run by parents with around 25 attendees and so well done Stephen Philip & team. Around the same time Andrew Williams attended a Pony Club gathering at Bungendore & coached 45 experienced riders. Club Chukka membership was extended to enable these members to play at any club, not only a home club. This makes it ideal for grooms or people just wanting to try the game out under non-competitive circumstances.
Our promotion/marketing team of Julie McIntosh, Adam Marshall and Suzie Ruse has put in a lot of time to modernize the look of our Season Guide/calendar and carry this over to our website, the upgraded and redesigned version of which was launched in May. The new fresh look for NSWPA is also seen now in the e-bulletins for players and social members, and these have received much favourable comment.
On the advice of our insurance brokers, APF have produced a Safety checklist as an essential step forward for risk management in polo, which is to be completed by each Club and was circulated in August. While we have received an excellent (100%) response from northern NSW clubs, other zones have responded poorly and need to catch up. James Simson has done a great job driving this unenviable task.
The SconeJuniorPoloSchool proves as popular as ever with 85 attendees in October and NSWPA was pleased to be able to cover their loss of sponsorship and assist with a grant of $1,200 for awards and prizes. The Scone Polo School Committee continues to set the benchmark in encouraging junior participation.
A major task for the Year has been the revision of the NSWPA Constitution. While looking at the final draft it may not appear to be much but an enormous amount of work has been done by many directors, not just in preparing and revising the drafts but in communication with Clubs and gathering and sorting the feedback. Led by Jenny Herz and Stephen Philip the Board has produced a document that can meet the needs of modern sports administration and set us up for many years to come, while incorporating the views and suggestions of the whole polo community.
Fortunately there has been minimal disciplinary action during the year and the training and assessment of umpires continues under the umpire accreditation process.
- Challenges / Areas for improvement
While it is always pleasant to be able to report on a year when much has been achieved in both competition and administration, there are still areas we need to focus on in 2013.
- Safety Checklists & Incident reporting – we still have to chase these in many cases and, while it may appear an unnecessary administrative burden on clubs to some, our duty of care to keep this exciting but sometimes dangerous sport adequately supervised and insured means that such obligations are properly met.
- State sponsorship – while lots of sponsorship dollars come into the sport for individual events, unlike most other sporting bodies we do not have any sponsors to assist with offsetting the ever-increasing costs occasioned by modern administration demands. Hopefully under the new Board structure an active sponsorship sub-committee can be established to remedy this.
- Player numbers, especially full playing members, are down on previous years – this is probably reflective of current economic conditions but the challenge of growing the number of participants and retaining those who enter the sport remains a major concern. The most positive sign is the large increase in coaching clinic participation and part of the Board’s focus in future will be on how to encourage more accessible and affordable entry levels for new players.
- Umpiring standards – comments about consistency and clarity of umpiring have been received and it continues to be an issue for our sport with its umpiring structure involving existing players. As the accreditation process rolls out hopefully the overall umpiring standards will continue to improve.