18 Oct CELEBRATORY HALF-YEARLY MEETING FOR THE VETS

The 2022 half-yearly General Meeting of HVBA was held on Monday 17 October at Meltham Sports Complex. A change of the usual agenda gave the meeting a celebratory and feel good feel at the end of a very successful season of veterans bowling in Huddersfield. As David Sykes, our League and Comps Secretary pointed out in his review it had been anything but plain sailing with postponed matches due to heatwaves, floods and Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral but all fixtures and competitions were concluded just a week later than planned.

The meeting started with a minutes silence in honour of Ian Kinloch, a long standing member of the Management Committee who had passed away the week before.

Our President, Alan Hirst, started the presentations with a special award for Lawrence Wright of Slaithwaite C&BC for his achievement of playing competitive bowling into and beyond his 90th year. Another Certificate of Appreciation was awarded to John Townend for his and Paddock I&C’s assistance over many years in hosting the meetings of the Association.

The trophy presentations continued and first up was Ian Briggs of Longwood BC for winning the Rosebowl who thanked the Association for the work done organising bowling for the over 60’s and the fact that he’d won our Rosebowl qualified him to play in the Huddersfield Champion of Champions competition the weekend before which he duly won. He finished his thank you speech with the rallying cry of Up the Vets!

David Sykes presided over the distribution to all the competition winners whilst Alan Hirst shook many hands and handed out trophies and winners cheques.

The treasurer, Alan Stephenson, outlined his budget and subscription fees for 2023 which were approved by club representatives attending.

The general secretary, Richard Armitage, ran through proposed changes to the Bye-Laws for 2023 which were approved by the club reps. He proceeded to give reasons for continuing printed publication of a Year Book and there was a vigorous discussion amongst delegates. He concluded by advising everyone of the progress made in the last year of an idea first muted at the 2021 meeting and which had grown into Huddersfield Bowls Development who had supervised the training of 10 coaches to BCGBA Level 1. The coaches had gone onto aiding recruitment at several clubs in the district and had attended two Try Bowling events held in Greenhead Park.