Chair’s Blog September 2023
As we enter our Winter bridge season, we are seeing positive signs for our clubs’ future.
It’s been a slow climb out from the pandemic hiatus but our session levels are now close to pre-covid levels and moving forward. Nationally, 12 months to August 2023 volume is 4% up on the previous 12 months 2022. Our own county has a more substantial 12% growth, so well done our Yorkshire clubs! Partly our above county average growth is due to some of our clubs enthusiastically adopting online bridge to complement their in-club play.
We are now back to f2f competitive inter-club play. Our clubs’ Yorkshire League participation has improved to 56 club teams for this coming season starting end October. Thanks again to Mike Jackson and his team!
The only national laggard is congress play and I ask you to spread the word and participate in our two day Great Northern Swiss Pairs Congress running in Leeds from 30 September to 1st October. There is still time to enter. Click here.
Our Grants to Yorkshire Clubs project is progressing well with seven clubs submitting applications to date and still time for your club to apply.
The first two sessions of our own training of Yorkshire club TD’s are now complete with fifteen candidates enrolled.
We have been busy restructuring our Board to meet the challenge of future growth.
In my January Chair’s Blog we asked for help to fill our Board vacancy. We now have not one but two additional Board Members: Mark Dunkley from York BC and Ruth Kerr from Hull and Sheffield BC’s.
Also, we have re-structured to better manage our workloads. We have split the Chair responsibilities to two co-chairs, myself taking overall responsibility for competitive play and David Guild managing the bridge development initiatives.
It’s going to be an exciting next twelve months!
Best regards
Nick Woolven and David Guild
