Dear Crewe and District Players

I hope you all experienced an enjoyable start to the season. Everything is underway including senior leagues, John Ford, Masters tournament and Junior League shortly. As we move into November I want to remind you of a crucial action that we all undertook after the AGM. Dave Sumner is standing down as Chairman after this season. He has given us many years diligent service and wishes to take a step back. He is not taking a step out however. He intends to remain part of the league and it's activities to the point of not ruling out still taking on certain tasks.

As at the time of writing we have not received any firm indications of anyone stepping up to the role.

We do need to appoint a new Chairman. I have made it clear that I intend to remain in the Secretary role (so long as people don't want to get rid of me!!) and will help and guide said person, as will all of the exec. I do NOT intend by default to just move in to the chairman's role irrespective of whether a new volunteer Secretary came along. So the new person needs to come from the 277 currently registered players (or anyone else interested).

Please be aware of the following:

• We do need a Chairman and we will have a vacancy in April next.
• The core role of Chairman is straightforward. At it's most basic the role is one of leadership. This of course means being the team leader of the exec chairing 3 meetings a year and leading the AGM once a year.
• Beyond that the leadership role means understanding how Badminton is evolving as a recreational sport and offering thoughts with the exec on how Crewe league might move forwards.
• Ideally the Chairman is our voice at Cheshire County Badminton Association to whom we are affiliated. In turn Cheshire represent us at Badminton England so your voice can be heard even at that level. They meet periodically and we go along to contribute our ideas and take away CCBA policy.
• Dave currently does many things beside which are not part of the Chairman's role. Examples are: being coordinator of Junior League, Manager of John Ford Tournament, Organiser of the quiz, club (Crosses) roles, Marketing of Over 65s group (Terry does the organising), Coordinator of the annual dinner, and more. WE ARE NOR ASKING OUR VOLUNTEER TO TAKE ON ANY OF THIS UNLESS THEY WISH TO.

Please consider this carefully and speak to people. If anyone wants to have an exploratory chat with Dave or I we can do that with no commitment expected. We all owe Dave a massive debt of gratitude, the simplest way to express this is for one of our players to step into the role.

Thanks

Brian