20 – BY ORDER OF THE COMMITTEE
“A committee is a group of the unwilling, chosen from the unfit, to do the unnecessary.”
Anonymous
Will Carling famously described the Rugby Football Union (RFU) Committee as “57 old farts” a quote that, temporarily, cost him his job as England captain. Whilst not the most sensitive comment to level at your employers, it struck a chord with many.
Another well-worn description of committees is “a collection of well meaning idiots”. I am allowed to say this because I have served as one of those idiots for longer than I care to remember. My most telling contribution in that time is convincing the rest we should meet less.
Trivia Rules
Demonstrating this most useless of decision making vehicles was the night at probably the most defining point in our cricket club’s history. We were trying to agree on a plan to raise the funds to replace our crumbling clubhouse before it fell down around us.
Regardless, we wasted an hour debating a complaint as to why we had run out of margarine the previous Saturday.
Committees are rarely overloaded with business sense. Those that possess this quickly realise the futility of aspiring for an arena where decisions are made quickly and with certainty, not without a pointless rambling debate and a deferral until next month as another excuse for a pint.
Money Talks
My earliest experience was as a very naïve fourteen-year-old, so the juniors could have some representation at the club. Given that the club was in a perennially penniless state, the juniors were actually the most liquid element. We had the money; cue power? Maybe not.
As juniors we’d been busy flogging all sorts of tat – pens, ties, shirts etc – to kick start the club into a larger fund-raising effort. That’s not intended to decry those who had taken the club to that point; we just had different approaches.
Way back in the 1970s, we had formed a Junior Committee originally as a wheeze to convince Haighy to grant us a key to the old hut for winter; we spent our summers on the field so it seemed cruel to kick us off for the winter.
It might be okay for polar bears to have to find new grounds for the winter but we just wanted a bit of shelter, even if the woodworm-ridden hut was the best available.
Cautious as ever Haighy “lent” us a key for our first meeting and we promptly got several cut and handed back the original; I think he knew but simply played along with us.
New Offices
No other local gang could match this splendour even if it was sub-zero at times and, with honest intent, we set about creating the Junior Committee. As we needed a Secretary we decided to advertise in the hope of meeting girls; we’d watched too many bad movies already.
We even held interviews and eventually our Junior Committee was formed. Now we had to decide what to do as the Elders would want a report from us at their monthly staging post, The Wrose Bull pub.
In the summer we had raised a decent sum but now we hit upon the idea of broadening our offering, a sort of Villas Argos catalogue. So it was that we started selling Christmas cards, embossed pens and horrible acrylic club ties; I think we were partially responsible for kick starting the Chinese economy.
“Tha’s Got ‘Ow Much?”
When we rolled up to the main committee to present our initial report, it was quite daunting as there could be upwards of twenty sat there. Generally they were all smoking their heads off and you struggled to make out faces through the smog. When I told them of our growing fortune you could see the faces then!
I remain convinced that I will croak it from emphysema one day but there was no doubt they were impressed.
With so many the aim of each meeting seemed simply to ensure it lasted until closing time. There was little structure and it was easy to see why little ever got done. I would go to school the day after stinking like a taproom.
What became apparent was that the last thing you should attempt to debate at a Cricket Club Committee is cricket. The majority of people will have never played, watched nor shown the least bit of interest in the game.
Sadly, just when we should have been rolling in it, after several years of a new bar, it took the junior funds to bail out the club from a combination of ineptitude and crookedness. Those were very dark days and there were times when I wondered if we would survive them.
The Club Rep
Most leagues require clubs to send along a rep to various league meetings. You can imagine how little is achieved through these as the majority of people neither want to be there nor have any understanding why; consequently, the status quo is rarely disturbed. The only positive change has been the smoking ban.
All sports suffer and the monthly meetings of the Bradford Sunday Alliance Football League were some of the worst. These were held at the East Bowling Unity Club (EBU) in the concert room and it was often pure theatre.
The Treasurer, a larger than life character called Eric, would always preface his Treasurer’s Report with a joke in an attempt to hide the fact that, in common with most Treasurers, he was clueless about accounts.
I willed him on to make this month’s attempt funny only for him to cock-up the punch line again to be greeted with incredulous looks asking “what the fuck was that all about?”
Eric would then get his own back by reading out every line of figures from the accounts to numb the attendees into submission; laugh they bloody well would next month.
The good thing about the EBU was that it had several exit routes. The trick was to collect your monthly papers at the front desk, hang around two minutes and then slip out of the snooker room exit unless you fancied watching Eric die again on stage.
The Drone
Cricket meetings are by far the worst because there are so many rules to tinker around with. As the end of summer approaches, there will be somebody frustrated by their general lack of purpose in life who will have been beavering away with all manner of proposed changes.
Towards the end of each summer when most volunteers are generally exhausted from the effort of keeping individual clubs afloat, the annual proposals for rule changes dossier will land. Inevitably, the inane and pointless always trump the rare attempts at progress.
Our league meets in October to debate the merits of each proposal – having presumably debated them back at base – and then meet again in November to vote. It is as relevant as medium wave radio.
Most clubs send the guy who either lives nearest to the venue or has plainly got nothing better to do. However, all volunteer based clubs are struggling with ever dwindling numbers left to cope with often more complex regulations.
Those who turn up on a Saturday afternoon, play a game and then scarper are safe in the knowledge that, as player numbers dwindle and commitment to play weakens, they will always get a game somewhere.
One day, there will be no volunteers and, maybe that old adage of always appreciating something most when it’s gone will come home to roost for many? And doubtless committees will still find some reason to meet.
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