Debbie Lines (ENG) appointed Deputy Secretary-General

The WCF Management Committee is pleased to announce that Debbie Lines (ENG) has been appointed Deputy Secretary-General with effect from 1 September 2020.

Stephen Mulliner will retire on 31 August 2021 on the completion of his second four-year term and, as previously announced, the intention is that Debbie will become Acting Secretary-General from 1 September 2021 to 31December 2021 and Secretary-General from 1 January 2022 to 31 December 2025.  She will be eligible to be appointed for a second four-year term from 1 January 2026 to 31 December 2029.

Debbie Lines (nee Cornelius) is a qualified accountant who spent 15 years in various finance roles in UK industry before gaining change management qualifications.  Her last full-time role was six years as Head of Florist Operations for Interflora.

Debbie grew up playing croquet from the age of six and became England's leading lady player in the 1990s.  She represented Great Britain in the 1996 MacRobertson Shield.  She is currently a part-time Parish Clerk and Responsible Financial Officer.

 

 

Development Projects

We live in unprecedented times.

We appreciate that some of us will have far more important matters in our lives at the present time, others will be frantically busy dealing with the situation we face and to those of you involved in essential services we are particularly grateful.

However others will have unprecedented amounts of spare time on their hands. If you are looking for something to do here are a wide range of projects we have gathered from various sources from official surveys to individual chats. They have one thing in common they are all stand alone, novel and do not require significant bureaucratic input.

If you are interested in delivering one of them (and we mean actually doing, not discussing them in principle) please get in touch and we will try to allocate projects, co-ordinate interested parties etc. The idea would be that the aim should be to complete the task within the month (8&9 excepted!).

As you will see some of the ideas, which cover a variety of skills, are very fledgling and we have little idea of what might be possible but hopefully the descriptions will provide inspiration. Whilst we intend to provide a degree of co-ordination, we basically believe that this is one of those occasions where it is best to just get on and do something.

Please let us know if you are interested in doing any of the following:-

1 Create a document that can be used to help those seeking to establish a croquet club at another existing sports venue. Giving example of current co-existence and providing answers to the questions/problems that usually come up:-

a Golf

b Bowls

c Lawn Tennis

d Other

2 Create an app allowing managers and players to communicate lawn allocations and results to each other ie players register at start of event, the manager sets up games on the app, which alerts players to their next opponent and lawn, the players report the result via the app (in theory this additionally facilitates remote tournament management). Integration with croquetscores might be a further extension.

3 Create an index of web-links to existing croquet videos and matches

4 Create an app that allows players to "tick-off" croquet clubs as they visit them and also show when they are present at a club to their friends (hopefully that description might be enough for someone to have a vision)

5 Potentially possible to tie in with #4? A "twinning" app/site that allows clubs to advertise an interest in hosting [overseas, although that obviously need not be the case] players/clubs

6 Create some video content (likely by editing existing) aimed at attracting young players to the sport (or indeed any other market segment)

7 If anyone is interested in translating material from English to another language, we can ask that Member what they would most like doing

8 Increasing the scope somewhat, Global Croquet League Management System. The English Chess Federation has a system that allows each league around the country to register and manage its own league with its own rules (eg number of players, points for a win, bespoke rules on defaults etc) from a single site, saving each league to deal with the matter individually https://ecflms.org.uk/lms/. Is it feasible to create a solution for croquet globally that caters for AC, GC, Handicap, Level etc all hosted on one site for every league in the World to use?

9 If that sounds too easy how about a tournament management application that can deal with multiple venues, events and formats?

(All work would be on a voluntary basis on behalf of the WCF for the benefit of World Croquet).

If you are unable to help with any of the above but have a standalone idea of your own that you would like to see added to the list please let us know.

Cheers

Ian Burridge & Roberts Stafeckis

WCF Development Group

burridge.ian@googlemail.com

roberts.stafeckis@gmail.com

 

Results of the 2019 WCF elections

The results of the 2019 WCF elections are as follows:

WCF President

Ian Burridge (Wales) 42 votes

Mike Cohn (Australia) 18 votes.

Ian Burridge is hereby elected to serve as WCF President from 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2023.

WCF Management Committee

Harold Denton (USA) 41 votes

Begona Elzaburu (Spain) 36 votes

Samir Patel (England) 44 votes

Amir Ramsis (Egypt) 37 votes

Harold Denton, Samir Patel and Amir Ramsis are hereby elected to serve on the WCF Management Committee from 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2023.

Voting data

President: 60 votes were cast out of 62 votes possible.

MC: 158 votes were cast out of 186 votes possible.  22 votes were withheld and 6 were not cast.

Online referee training and accreditation

A working group has been set up to investigate the feasibility of producing some online referee training and accreditation.

Our smaller Members do not have the infrastructure or geography to support on lawn courses or exams. By providing them with an online training course and exam, it will allow these countries to improve the quality of refereeing on offer.

Ideally, this online course would later be validated by some on lawn time as opportunity allows.

Videos are being taken and will be tested soon.

WCF Working Group 4 - WCF Referee training and accreditation Report

Global Player & Games Database

The World Croquet Federation has identified potential benefits of implementing a Global Player & Games Database and has set up a working group to establish the scope, feasibility (or otherwise) and costs of implementing such a system.

The chairman of the working group, Phil Cordingley, has now presented initial thoughts and a feasibility study.

Phil Cordingley is positive about the plan and regards it as a straightforward and feasible IT project.  He is actively working on producing a database design (Phase 0) for review and approval by the MC.  Implementation could be achieved either by harnessing voluntary IT resources from within the croquet community or by commercial expertise (e.g. from India).  Phil Cordingley hopes that Phase 1 (incorporation of the AC and GC rankings) can be achieved by end 2021.

Working Group reports to date:-

WCF Working Group 2 - Global Player & Games Database Feasibility Study 7.10.2020

WCF Working Group 2 - Global Player & Games Database Progress Report 6.2.2021