Marshalling - Is it right that we insist?

[Snoop Doug]

[quote="Paul H"]I think you have to sensible about this as some people are not interested in racing and have too many other commitments to marshal.

Im a member of quite a few clubs and none of them apart from ACC make you marshal and if they did, I would have to cancel my membership for some of them which will cost them revenue.

I have of course done my duty for ACC this year.

[quote]Sorry - I sound like a stuck record but it's in the rules Paul

[Snoop Doug]

Thanks Paul. You are right, we are debating that and I should have perhaps said it's currently in the rules. Beg pardon.

Finding time. We promote and run events at varied times of day, during the week, and at weekends. I really struggle to see that someone could really be sooooooo busy as to not be able to find a slot somewhere in our varied calendar that they simply couldn't make.

Sean and Adam - great point, of course we shouldn't seek to use Rule 12 to throw people out (in fact the rule does not contain such an option). Maybe we should say you have to be based in the UK? It's getting more complicated...

Minority AGM? The AGM is open to all. It's a completely inclusive event. Perhaps if you would like to volunteer and organise postal voting please engage with the committee and propose to do so. Until then I (and of course others) encourage folk to turn up and have an active voice in club matters. It is perfectly possible for someone to propose to remove rule 12 then no one has any obligation to help out at all. Let's face it - the rule is an ass right now as it ain't enforced

We have sufficient members that if everyone supported the club as currently obliged, we would each have to do less than one duty per year. As it stands, there are people already on their 4th, 5th helping duty in 2010 because too many folk want to take from the raw ingredients I listed previously and give nothing. More encouragement (and perhaps visible leadership, e.g. it would be nice if all the VCs did their bit then as a group they could encourage participation whilst enjoying the club run?) seems to be the preferred initial option at least.

I'm off to enjoy the simple pleasure of watching my daughter getting to grips with the wonder that is cycling. Cheers Paul (et al) for your ongoing thoughts and contributions.

[Paul H]

My point is that if you dont use the club much and only do a few CRs a year, you shouldnt be obliged to marshal if you pay your subs.

Like most, im not interested in getting involved with club politics especialy if its as bad as you say it is.

As the majority in the club do not volunteer, they have unofficialy voted against this rule anyway.

[Toks]

I don't think we should insist Snoop. We should definitley incentivize (is that a word?) £5 off your membership if you Marshal once; Membership is free if you Marshal more than 8-10 hours in total). It's gotta be the "carrot" rather than the "stick" for me every time. Why not just put the membership up to £25 for those who don't wanna marshall I'm sure most people that didn't want to marshall would happily pay that. There was big thread on the Dulwich Paragon [url=http://dulwichparagon.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=3658]forum[/url] about this very same thing. Basically someone was advocated joining the club, getting the nice kit and only going on club run but not marshalling. This got quite a few members angry.As someone said early there are quite a few old style cycling clubs (usually the one's with a rubbish kit ) that are dead set in their ways and don't have a thriving membership like we do. Anyone heard of Islington CC,? a 2nd claim club I rode with when I first join ACC. Well they literally died a about three years ago. I wonder if some of their written and unwritten rules - two rides and you must join, wear club kit, don't ride ahead on the hills, keep thing clichy and don't associate with newbies, don't wait for newbies if they get dropped etc - contributed to their downfall.
Lets not introduce new rules just for the sake of it. Personally I still think we should look at our club runs and ensure they are being run smooth and orderely. Lots of crashes this year - a bit worrying!

[Jon H]

The way I see it, we are currently a coalition of two clubs:

The Addiscombe Cycle Racing Club - the folks who compete in and promote cycle sport in whatever discipline.

The Addiscombe Social Cycling Club - the folks who ride to Charlwood cafe once a week.

[Snoop Doug]

[quote="Toks"]I don't think we should insist Snoop. We should definitley incentivize (is that a word?) £5 off your membership if you Marshal once; Membership is free if you Marshal more than 8-10 hours in total). It's gotta be the "carrot" rather than the "stick" for me every time. Why not just put the membership up to £25 for those who don't wanna marshall I'm sure most people that didn't want to marshall would happily pay that. There was big thread on the Dulwich Paragon [url=http://dulwichparagon.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=3658]forum[/url] about this very same thing. Basically someone was advocated joining the club, getting the nice kit and only going on club run but not marshalling. This got quite a few members angry.As someone said early there are quite a few old style cycling clubs (usually the one's with a rubbish kit ) that are dead set in their ways and don't have a thriving membership like we do. Anyone heard of Islington CC,? a 2nd claim club I rode with when I first join ACC. Well they literally died a about three years ago. I wonder if some of their written and unwritten rules - two rides and you must join, wear club kit, don't ride ahead on the hills, keep thing clichy and don't associate with newbies, don't wait for newbies if they get dropped etc - contributed to their downfall.
Lets not introduce new rules just for the sake of it. Personally I still think we should look at our club runs and ensure they are being run smooth and orderely. Lots of crashes this year - a bit worrying!

[Andrew G]

It's in the rules so it should be insisted upon. Is a few hours once a year such an onerous task?

For those that only do CRs and don't see why they should marshal at a race how about this:

50 organised CRs a year, each club run say 3 hours, £20 annual subs.

That's 40p per CR and 13p per hour of an organised club event run by volunteers.

If you only do a few CRs a year then that's not the club's fault and it still organises the event for those that are there. You can not pro-rate subs and duties depending on club useage, and arguably someone who doesn't do CRs and only does 10 mile TTs is using the club less.

For the last couple of years agreeable methods to improve take-up have been tried with an unagreeable response from a lot of members so why not clamp down now. A couple of suggestions have been mentioned here but as I see them they would require someone to administrate and run/organise them. So who's going to volunteer to do that?

In the last 15 months the following has happened:

1) A second claim member pushed off the first half of the field before racing, he was taken over in the pushing off duties by a first claim member who raced early so they could get back to push the second half of the field.

2) 80+ year old members have volunteered at short notice to fulfil a role so that someone didn't have to give up their race to do it.

Is it right that 2 people (one a 2nd claim member) had their race preparation/recovery messed about with? Is it right that our more elderly members who've supported the club for decades are still having to step in?

How this happens in a club which boasts of 250-300 members and 70-100 on every CR is ridiculous.

[quote="Jon Hemming"]The way I see it, we are currently a coalition of two clubs:

The Addiscombe Cycle Racing Club - the folks who compete in and promote cycle sport in whatever discipline.

The Addiscombe Social Cycling Club - the folks who ride to Charlwood cafe once a week.

[quote="Snoop Doug"]
We don't have a thriving membership. Kid yourself not. Yes we are a certain size, but we ain't growing. Folk drift away about as much as they join, we're pretty static.

[Dombo]

Forgive me if I'm missing something or being obtuse, but so what if Dulwich Paragon or any other club is nearly bigger than ours? Is there a prize, or just bragging rights when we get a vast number of yellow-clad cyclists amassed on Brighton Pier?
And which is the biggest club in the South East, if we're 2nd?

[Toks]

[quote="Dombo"]Forgive me if I'm missing something or being obtuse, but so what if Dulwich Paragon or any other club is nearly bigger than ours? Is there a prize, or just bragging rights when we get a vast number of yellow-clad cyclists amassed on Brighton Pier?
And which is the biggest club in the South East, if we're 2nd?

[Jon H]

[quote="Toks"]I mentioned it because we alluded to our sizeable membership that all

[David.Hilbert]

[quote]So what Andrew? they're so not bothered. What do you wanna do kick them all out? Thats a crazy idea and a real retrograde step. The club will be down to 30-50 people before you know it. Maybe some people would like that. A real shame considering how much time and effort peeps like Marco et al spent during the late nineties and early noughties to build up the club.

[higg]

There's a lot of subjective numbers thrown about here, some with good basis, some without, for example

90% go on club run only
30-50 people racing
250 members
100 on club run

Maybe it's the engineer in me, but I'd like a bit more clarity on who is in the club and what their attitude is. I propose a survey of the current mebership list to see what everybody actually wants to do. I don't mind organising this (with a few others just to provide some verification). Then as a club we can decide what to do.

I'll give it a bit more thought but I'm thinking along the lines of :

Per year
How often do you race ?
How many club runs ?
How many special club runs ?
How many socials ?

How many time would you be willing to help out with race support ?
How many time would you be willing to help out with club run support ?
How much time would you be willing to help out with club admin ?
How many time would you be willing to help out with general cycle promotion with 3rd parties (i.c) LCC, CTC, local council etc. ?

While we're at it the survey could also delve into how people want to communicate :

word of mouth
club room
forum
email newletter
website
announcement on club run



I'd like to see the club stay together. There's enough problems out there between without dividing into factions. One of the things I liked about this club originally was it's "no clique" mentality and that there was good cross-over between the differnet disciplines.

Times are changing and its no surprise the profile of membership will change. Let's not be embarrased about this. All the big London clubs are beginning to ask themselves the same questions right now. 5 years ago, 50-100 members, now 200 members and growing, these are two different animals and maybe needs a different approach (or maybe not).

A bit of friendly rivalry between clubs is all well and good but we shouldn't raise any unnecessary barriers, sometimes we can learn things from other clubs, even if their outlook is slightly different.


Aodan.