LUCAN COUNTY GOLF SOCIETY

Honorary Secretary 

Booking of Venues

As I mentioned above this year’s outings were all on Saturdays which, in the past proved to be the most popular and best attended, but also incur weekend rates.  Our committee have considered this matter several times and have decided for the coming year to include some Friday PM outings during the summer, and a Sunday morning outing in March for our first outing.  We would welcome any feedback on this decision and we will monitor the attendance to gauge the popularity of these outings.

Weekend Away

This year our Captain, Martin, took us North to Dundalk and Greenore for our weekend away. We played two excellent courses with several golfers expressing great satisfaction with them and planning to go back again to play those courses.  We were blessed with good weather and beautiful scenery there and the hotel and food was first class all round.

Challenge Cup

Our annual Challenge Cup competition against the Liffey Society again took a lot of effort to get it staged but eventually was played in Kilcock in August. The result was a magnificent win for Lucan County 5.5 to 2.5. This was an exact reversal of the previous year due, no doubt, to the fact that our Honorary Secretary was unavailable to play last year.

I think the idea of playing it in August before pole-forking starts, and when we had no other outing, worked out very well for us this year.  

Handicaps and Results

 Alan has continued to keep strict control on the Handicaps of our players based on results of our outings. Anyone lucky enough to win an outing will have felt the effect of the scissors haircut. However, this ensures fairness for all and results in a spread of winners.

Player of the Year

The Golfer-of-the-Year situation is based on the results after each outing.  As always the GOY was pretty open as we approached the last few outings.  However, the eventual winner had shown great consistency during the year and garnered points at every outing played. In checking back over the winners during the year he figured in every one of them and well deserves the overall Player-of-the-year status.  This golfer also finished in second place for POY the previous two years.  So a big congratulations to Frank Anderson - our Player of the Year for 2013.  Stephen O’Kennedy finished in second place but it may have been a much closer contest if Stephen had played at the second last outing, the Curragh. The eventual winner at the Curragh was most grateful to each of them.

Membership for 2013        

  Our membership at the end of 2013 was 26, down from 35 last year and 41 the previous year and a big drop from 50 – 60 we had a few years ago.  This has had a direct effect on our finances and makes the viability of the society doubtful. For the coming year each member will need to make an effort to recruit some new member.

Committee Meetings

We had a committee of 9 this year and had an excellent attendance at all our meetings.  In all we had 10 meetings dealing with the running of our outings and as usual there were a few ad hoc meetings dealing with matters as they arose.  I would like to express my thanks to our Captain and our committee for their time and effort in the smooth running of the meetings and the outings.

Sponsorship

We are most grateful to those sponsors who supported us this year as it helps us to provide a decent range of prizes for outing.  However, this year sponsors were very scarce indeed and this had a big bearing on our finances. For next year we would ask every member to consider some sponsorship, either individually or in partnership with one or two others.  This has worked very well in the past and helps us to keep up a good standard of prizes for outings.

Society website

Jimmy Kelly has continued to keep up-to-date our dedicated website which he created, and this is now a very valuable source of both current and historic information on our society.  All - fixtures, contact details, current committee, photo album, past captains, results, old photos, handicaps, reports, challenge cup and special offers can be found on the website.  See  http://www.lucancountygolfsociety.net/  As this site contains all the information on outings I have dispensed with the usual page of outing results.

Jimmy the work you do on this is greatly appreciated.

The County Bar venue

Last January, before the start of our outings, our Captain, Martin, was asked to meet with Gerry Colgan and Simon, the bar manager.  At that meeting Gerry Colgan expressed his dissatisfaction with our society for a number of reasons. I won’t outline these here as the Captain will speak later about the matter.  Our committee discussed the details at length and decided to offer Gerry the position of Honorary President. We would have a President’s Outing where he would present the prizes, and he could also present the prizes after any other outing as the majority of the presentations are carried out in the County. In addition we arranged to have a Presidents Plaque manufactured and erected in the County Bar.

The President’s Day was staged at Beaverstown in June and Gerry sponsored all the prizes in addition to sponsorship he gave the Society at the start of the year.  However, as a result of alleged comments made in the lead up to the Beaverstown Outing things went very sour with Gerry Colgan. We again had meetings on this matter and letters were sent to Gerry to try and rectify any misunderstandings and continue our relationship with the County Bar.

I am merely signaling this matter now as our captain will speak to the meeting about it during his address.  

That, then, concludes my report for this year and I hope we can all look forward to a more successful year in 2014 with the help and support of each one of you.

Thank you.

Jim Cushen

Honorary Secretary 

We have again reached the end of another golfing year for our Society.  In the last few Secretary reports I said we were heading into the new golfing year with apprehension and anxiety and this was certainly true heading into the start of this year. To say we had a great year would be stretching things.  There is no doubt the austerity mood that has descended in the country has certainly effected our society.  Our membership is down, the numbers attending our outings is down, the cost of our outings is down – somewhat, our income is down and the weather has been down for the whole year.  So in keeping with the austerity my report will also be greatly cut down.  Despite all this we have got through 8 outings for the year fairly successfully.

Our committee has paid great attention to getting the best value possible for our outings and to keep the cost to a minimum.  We have continued to book Saturday outings wherever possible as experience has shown that these are the best attended.

As in previous years we have had 8 official outings including our weekend away. The courses played were:

March:   Royal Tara                                                        July 16^th:        Rathcore

April:   Headford                                                            September:    Captain’s Day - Knockanally

May:    W.E. Away – Castle Dargan                                 September:    The Curragh

June:   Luttrellstown                                                        October:        Castleknock

                                                                                     October:        Castleknock – Challenge Cup

I would like to thank our Captain, Pat Tierney, for his leadership and dedication during the year.  A special word of thanks must go to Jimmy Kelly who, together with Pat, did all the bookings and negotiated some great deals for all our outings.  Indeed, I would also like to thank the whole committee who put a lot of work into the smooth running of all our outings.

This year, as in the past, Martin O’Donohue has continued to hold raffles for any green fee vouchers we receive and this has proved to be a very valuable contribution to our Society’s finances.  Martin also ran the “2’s Club” at each outing.  Some of the “real golfers” have benefited from these draws.

Booking of Venues

As in other years we try to book Saturday outings whenever possible. While the weekends are more expensive for booking it seems to suit the majority of our members.  This year all our outings were on a Saturday.

Weekend Away

For our weekend away this year our Captain Pat took us west to his happy hunting ground in Sligo.  The small elite band of golfers who went this year had a great time at Castle Dargan which we played on the Friday and again on the Saturday.  The course was magnificent even though heavy rain the previous night made it heavy going.  But the great accommodation and food made up for any difficulties anyone had on the course. 

Challenge Cup

Our annual Challenge Cup competition against the Liffey Society was in some doubt for a while this year but eventually got underway in Castleknock on 18^th October.  This year Liffey Society came out on top  5.5 – 2.5.  Obviously our team was affected as our Hon Secretary couldn’t play. 

Handicaps and Results

As usual Alan has continued to keep strict control on the Handicaps of our players based on results of our outings.  This is a very important aspect of the running of a society to ensure fairness to all our players.  A glance at the spread of winners on the results sheet attached you will see that the system works reasonably well. Anyone who was lucky enough to win prizes will have received an extra bonus of a reduced handicap. 

Player of the Year

The Golfer-of-the-Year situation is based on the results after each outing.  As usual the GOY was pretty open as we approached the last few outings.  However, the eventual winner had shown great consistency during the year and deserved the overall Player-of-the-year status.  So a big congratulations to Philip Coyne our Player of the Year for 2012.

 Frank Anderson was second again this year, with Stephen O’Kennedy and John Burke third and fourth, respectively.

Membership for 2012        

  Our membership at the end of 2012 was 35.  This was down from 41 for last year and a big drop from 50 – 60 we had a few year ago.  The drop in numbers also has a direct effect on our finances.

Committee Meetings

We had a committee of 9 this year and had an excellent attendance at all our meetings.  In all we had about 8 official meetings dealing with the running of our outings and as usual there were a few ad hoc meetings dealing with matters as they arose.  I would like to express my thanks to our committee for their time and effort in the smooth running of the meetings and the outings.

Early this year our committee decided that as a golf society we should try to make a contribution this year to a charity and we selected Pieta House in Lucan as they do such great work in the area of SELF HARM, SUICIDE etc. So, on Captain’s Day, a portion of our Green Fee was devoted to Pieta.

Also, last night, Martin held a special fundraiser raffle for Pieta House as a conclusion for our current year and to kick off his year as Captain. The winner was Paddy Duffy, Eddie Coyne was second,  and Tom Bradley and Elaine Duffy were 3^rd & 4^th respectively.

Personally I am delighted that we decided to try and help Pieta House because of the great work they do.  From my own work with IRISH WATER SAFETY I am aware that of the average of 150 drownings each year more than 45% of these are suicide cases while another 25% are undecided.

So I would like to thank Martin for his initiative on this matter.

Sponsorship

This has been another horrible year with cut-backs and redundancies and places closing down etc.  Sponsorship for golf is very hard to obtain at present and we are therefore very grateful to all our sponsors who have supported us in this very difficult time.  Without this support it would be very difficult for us to continue with the great range of prizes which adds so much to our outings.

Society website

Jimmy Kelly has continued to keep up-to-date our dedicated website which he created, and this is now a very valuable source of both current and historic information on our society.  All - fixtures, contact details, current committee, photo album, past captains, results, old photos, handicaps, reports, challenge cup and special offers can be found on the website.  See  http://www.lucancountygolfsociety.net/ 

Jimmy the work you do on this is greatly appreciated.

Now we have reached the end of another year and I look forward to another successful year in 2013. Hopefully we will continue to have the support of each and every one of you.

Thank you.

Jim Cushen

Honorary Secretary 

We have again reached the end of another good golfing year for our Society.  In 2009 and 2010 I mentioned that we were heading into the year with apprehension and uncertainty, and the same was true at the start of this year.  Despite all that uncertainty I am delighted to report that we had a very successful golfing year for the society during 2011.

Our Committee was very conscious of the difficult financial circumstances prevailing this year and we tried very hard to get the best value possible when booking our outings. I think we did extremely well overall and the bookings reflected a good mix of venues coupled with good value for money.

This year we had 8 official outings including our weekend away. The courses played were:

March:   Luttrellstown                                                      July 16^th:        Palmerstown House – Captain’s Day

April:   Faithlegg & Waterford Castle - WE Away              August:          Naas

May:    BlackBush                                                          September:    Balbriggan

July 2^nd: Royal Tara                                                         October:        Grange Castle

                                                                                     October:        Castleknock – Non-official

I would like to thank our Captain, Eddie Coyne, for his leadership and dedication during the year.  A special word of thanks must go to Jimmy Kelly who, together with Eddie, did all the bookings and negotiated the good deals for all our outings.  Indeed, I would also like to thank the whole committee who put a lot of work into the smooth running of all our outings.

Following on from last year we have held raffles for any Green Fee vouchers received and this has proved to be a very valuable contribution to our Society’s finances.  Martin O’Donohue has arranged these raffles as well as running a “2’s Club” at each outing.

Booking of Venues

As in other years we try to book Saturday outings whenever possible. While the weekends are more expensive for booking it seems to suit the majority of our members.  This year we had 2 Sunday outings and the rest of them were Saturdays.

Weekend Away

For our weekend away this year we went back again to Faithlegg and Waterford Castle – two great courses which always prove popular.  We camped ourselves in the Tower Hotel in Waterford. I am reliably informed by those who lasted the pace, that a mighty craic went on to the very early hours of the morning. Obviously the news spread and the Garda were doing breathalyzer checks the next morning as people left the hotel.

In addition to the regular competition on each day we also ran a team event over the two days which kept the excitement and tension going to the end.  All in all it was a great weekend and very good value cost-wise.

Challenge Cup

Our annual Challenge Cup competition against the Liffey Society fell by the wayside this year due to the closure of the Salmon Leap Pub and, consequently, lack of a home base for the Liffey Society.  Instead we had an extra outing on the day as we already had a booking at Castleknock Course.

Handicaps and Results

Alan continued to keep strict control on the Handicaps of our players based on results of our outings.  This is a very important aspect of the running of a society to ensure fairness to all our players.  A glance at the spread of winners on the results sheet attached you will see that the system works reasonably well.

Player of the Year

The Golfer-of-the-Year situation is based on the results after each outing.  As usual the GOY was pretty open as we approached the last few outings.  Indeed, after our 2^nd last outing, Balbriggan, up to 11 players were still in the reckoning for Golfer-of-the –Year.  In the end, despite a bad back, and missing a few outings, the honors went to Jimmy Kelly.  So a big congratulations to Jimmy who has now won the GOY 3 times in the last few years.  Obviously a player of class and consistency.

Frank Anderson was second, with Paul Doyle and John Kelly third and fourth, respectively.

Membership for 2011

At the end of 2011 we had a membership of 41 which is a little down on last year.

Committee Meetings

We had a committee of 9 this year and had an excellent attendance at all our meetings.  In all we had about 8 official meetings dealing with the running of our outings and as usual there were a few ad hoc meetings dealing with matters as they arose.  I would like to express my thanks to our committee for their time and effort in the smooth running of the meetings and the outings.

Sponsorship

This has been a horrid year with cut-backs and redundancies and places closing down etc.  We are therefore very grateful to all our sponsors who have supported us in this very difficult time.  Without this support it would be very difficult for us to continue with the great range of prizes which adds so much to our outings.

Society website

Last year I mentioned that Jimmy Kelly had created a dedicated website for our society. You can find this on http://www.lucancountygolfsociety.net/  Jimmy has done tremendous work during the year in keeping this up-to-date.  It has headings covering  - fixtures, contact details, current committee, photo album, past captains, results, old photos, handicaps, reports, challenge cup and special offers.

I would recommend everyone to look at the website regularly as it is a great source of information. It makes a lot of this report superfluous as all the news is at your fingertips or on your i-phone.  

Thanks again to Jimmy for all his work on this.

That’s it for this year and I look forward to another successful year in 2012 and look forward to the support of each and every one of you.T

Thank you.

Jim Cushen

Honorary Secretary

When I presented my report last year I mentioned that we had entered 2009 with much apprehension about the financial uncertainty for that year.  Despite that uncertainty we had had a very successful golfing year for the society that year.

Little did we think heading into 2010 that this uncertainty would continue and, indeed, increase.  Our Committee was very conscious of the prevailing climate when booking our outings for this year and tried hard to get the best value possible.  I hope you will agree that the bookings made consisted of good value and afforded a nice variety of courses and challenges.

This year we had 8 official outings plus our annual Challange Cup competition against the Liffey Society.  The courses played were:

March:   Castleknock                                                      July:   Edenderry

April:   Bearna/ Galway Bay - WE Away                       August: Kilcock  -  Captain’s Day

May:    BlackBush                                                           September: Trim

June:   Royal Tara                                                          October: Killeen

                                                                                           October: Millicent -  Challenge Cup

I would like to thank our Captain, John Burke, for his dedication and leadership and, indeed, our whole committee who worked to ensure we had a very successful year.  A special word of thanks to Jimmy Kelly who did all the bookings and negotiated good deals for all our outings.

Most Golf Clubs now tend to give a free four-ball voucher following society outing. This year, following a proposal from Martin O’Donohue, we held a raffle for these vouchers at the presentation of prizes.  This has proved to be a very valuable contribution to our Society’s finances.  Martin has arranged these raffles as well as running a “2’s Club” at each outing.

Booking of Venues

As in other years we try to book Saturday outings whenever possible. While the weekends are more expensive for booking it seems to suit the majority of our members.  This year all of our outings were on Saturdays apart from the Challenge Cup which was on Sunday 31^st October.

Weekend Away

This year, in deference to our Captain John Burke, we went west of the Shannon for our Weekend Away. (to hell or to Connacht).  We played two great courses, Bearna and Galway Bay, which proved a great challenge to us foreigners to that part of the world.  In addition to the regular competition on each day we also ran a team event over the two days which kept the excitement and tension going to the end.  The Ardilaun Hotel proved to be a most popular and convenient base for the weekend.

Challenge Cup

Our annual Challenge Cup competition against the Liffey Society was held on 31^st October at Millicent Golf Course.  We had 12 four-ball teams competing and, like every year it was very keenly contested by each of the teams.  Last year we decided to lend the cup to the Liffey Society for a while so we let them win.  However, this year we made it a very decisive victory with an 8½ - 3½ win for the Lucan County Society.  The celebrations, the food and the bragging in the Leap and later in the County made it a great day all round.

I think we should say a big thank you to Jimmy Kelly for making all the arrangements for the challenge Cup competition, including booking the venue and selecting the pairings, with assistance of Stephen O’Kennedy.

Handicaps and Results

In any Society it is very important to the running of the society that a strictly controlled handicap system is in place and applied for all the competitions.  Some years ago we issued a document outlining the system we use.  Alan uses a specially designed programme to input all the competition results and issue the list of winners.  It also automatically adjusts the handicaps of the players. Thus it is always up to date and results based.  When you look at the spread of winners on the results sheet attached to you see that the system works reasonably well.

Player of the Year

Alan keeps a running summary of the Golfer-of-the-Year situation based on the results after each outing.  This year the GOY was pretty open as we approached the last few outings.  At the second last outing – TRIM - the 1^st, 2^nd & 3^rd, slots were held by Martin Pearse, John Burke and Paul Doyle, respectively.  They managed to hold these places at the final outing as no one else gained sufficient points to catch them.  Well done to Martin, and also John and Paul, and a big thank you to Alan for his work on the results, the handicaps and the player-of-the-Year.

Membership for 2010        

  At the end of 2010 we had a membership of 47 which is the same as last year.

Committee Meetings

We had a committee of 9 this year and had an excellent attendance at all our meetings.  In all we had 8 official meetings dealing with the running of our outings.  In addition there were a few ad hoc meetings dealing with matters as they arose.  I would like to express my thanks to our committee for their time and effort in the smooth running of the meetings and the outings.

Sponsorship

As everyone knows this has been a dreadful year with cut-backs and redundancies etc, and we are therefore very grateful to all our sponsors who have supported us.  Without this support it would be very difficult for us to continue with the great range of prizes which adds so much to our outings.

Society website

In addition to all the other great work that Jimmy Kelly has done for the Society he has also created a dedicated website for our Society.  You can find this on http://lucancountygolfsociety.yolasite.com/ The intention is that it can be used to list our outings, provide an on-line booking system, posting of competition results, handicaps, photos and various news items. Please take a look at it and give us any feedback and suggestions you can for its use and improvement.  Thanks again to Jimmy for his work on this.

I look forward to another successful year in 2011 and hope we will have the support of each and every one of you.

Thank you.

Jim Cushen

Honorary Secretary

A number of these were welcome new venues to our schedule and its always nice to try out a few new places.

Booking of Venues

As always we try to book Saturday outings whenever possible and this year all our outings were on a Saturday except our opening one in Castleknock which was a Sunday.

Our Committee has already given a lot of attention to bookings for the coming year and our incoming Captain will give further information on these later.

Weekend Away

We had a great weekend away at Glasson in April and both the Hotel and the course were first class.  In addition to our regular games on the Friday and Saturday we also had a team event played over the two days which proved very popular.

I should mention here that Jimmy Kelly has set up a Web Folder with all the members’ Mobile Nos. and sends out a text notice of all outings.  Any changes to mobile numbers should be notified to the committee.

Challenge Cup

The annual Challenge Cup competition against the Liffey Society was held on Saturday 31^st October in Knockanally Golf Club. This year we had 12 four-ball teams competing and, as usual, it was very keenly contested by each team.  This year we decided to go easy on the opposition as we had won the cup so many times. The final outcome was a 7 – 5 win for Liffey Society. 

I would like to express our thanks to both Jimmy Kelly & Alan Hudson for the organisation and arrangements on behalf of our Society.

Handicap and Marking the Results

Alan Hudson has continued to do great work recording all outing results at the end of each outing and producing the winners list for prize presentations.  In addition he keeps very good control of the handicap situation for all our members.  Thanks again Alan for all the good work on our behalf.

Results Sheet for 2009

I have prepared a sheet showing the results of all our outings for the year.  When you look down the sheet you can see that there is a good spread of members showing up as winners.  This is a good indication that the handicapping is working well.  I did note a few names cropping up very regularly and I hope Alan’s computer has taken due note.

Player of the Year

Every year Alan keeps a running summary of the Golfer-of-the-Year situation based on the results after each outing.  After our second last outing at Tulfarris the five leading players were Ian Gleeson, Alan Hudson John Swan Eddie Coyne and Martin Rogers with just a few points separating each player.  At Druids Heath, our last outing, these players managed to hold on to their places their places. The only change was our Vice Captain asserting his position and sneaking into fifth place.

Membership for 2009

At the end of the 2009 season we had a membership of 48 which is just slightly lower than last year.

Committee meetings

During 2009 we had 10 official committee meetings dealing with the running of the Society. In addition there were a number of ad-hoc meetings and sub-meetings dealing with certain matters which arose from time to time.  We had a very good attendance at these meetings which is indicative of a very active and dedicated committee.   I would like to express my thanks to all our committee members for their time and effort in organizing the outings.

One item that has been discussed at several committee meetings lately is the problem of SLOW PLAY during outings.  We have received complaints, not only from members but also from some clubs.  For the next year our incoming committee will instigate a definite policy for slow play and this will be advised to all players.

Sponsorship

At our last AGM, as outlined in the minutes, we had a general discussion on the topic of Sponsorship.  We are very grateful to all our sponsors who have supported us as without them we would be unable to provide such good outings with worthwhile prizes.

I am looking forward to another successful year in 2010 and hope we can rely on all your support.

Thank you.

Jim Cushen

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

25^th November  2008

Honorary Secretary’s Report

Despite the very poor weather this year I am delighted to say we again had a very good year of golfing for the Lucan County Golf Society.  I would like to congratulate our Captain, Phillip Stokes, for his hard work and leadership on our behalf which made it such a successful year. 

During this year we had 9 official outings including our weekend away at Mount Wolesley. In addition to these outings we also held our annual Challenge Cup Competition against the Liffey Society which, as always, was a very keenly fought competition.  Unfortunately this year we had to cancel completely our outing at Knightsbrook because of the weather.  Indeed I think the Gods didn’t look kindly on our Sunday games as we had to reschedule Castleknock also because of weather.  Apart from that we managed to get through the rest of the fixtures.

Again this year we had a few new venues as well as a good mix of some of our regular favourites

Our venues this year were:

March:              Luttrellstown

April :               Beech Park

April:                Mount Wolesley –  Week End Away

May:                 Knockanally

June:                Castleknock    –    Played in July 

August:             Knightsbrook   -    Cancelled

September        Newlands       –     Captain’s Day                

October:           Curragh

October            Lucan             -     Challenge Cup

November:        Bettystown

Booking of Venues

As always we do our best to book Saturdays for our outings whenever possible.  This year we also had 3 Sunday outings.  While the weekend outings tend to be more expensive in green fees the numbers playing indicate that our members favour them and the support is much greater.

Already our committee have given a great deal of attention to the choice of venues for next year and our incoming Captain will give you further information on these later.

Weekend Away

We had a terrific Weekend Away this year at Mount Wolseley and both the hotel and golf course were first class.  In addition to the regular games on both the Friday and Saturday we had a very popular team event played over the two days.

Challenge Cup

The annual Challenge Cup against the Liffey Society took place on Friday 10^th October 2008 in Lucan Golf Club. We again emerged victorious in a very tight match on a 7 to 5 score-line in dreadful conditions. Congratulations to all who took part and ensured that the Cup will remain in the County Bar for at least another year.   

Handicapping and Marking the Results

 

Again our Minister for “Cuts & Bruises” carried out his regular good work of recording all outing results at the end of each outing and producing the winners list for the prize presentations. As usual he has regularly exercised his sharp scissors on the handicaps. 

Thanks again to Alan for all the good work done on our behalf during the year.

Results Sheet for 2008

I have again prepared a sheet showing the results from all the outings for the year.  When you glance down the sheet you can see that a wide range of our members are figuring in the results.  This shows that the handicapping is working and the society is functioning very, very well.

Player of the Year

Each year Alan keeps a running summary of the Golfer of the Year situation based on the results after each outing.  Usually the results depended on the final outing results with about 4 players who could possibly win. Going into our last outing at Bettystown Shay Stokes was leading by 1 point and he managed to hold out and push Noel Brady into second place. Stephen O’Kennedy was in third place. Congratulations to Shay and the others and we will watch with interest how this progresses next year.

Membership for 2008

Our Membership at the end of the 2008 season was 55 fully paid up members.  This is the same number as last year - so we win some and lose some. Overall the membership is in a very healthy state.

Committee Meetings

We have a very active committee looking after this Society. During the year we had 11 official meetings dealing with the running of the Society.  In addition there were a number of ad-hoc meetings and sub-meetings dealing with certain matters that arose from time to time.  We have had very good attendance at these meetings.  I would like to express my thanks to all our committee members for their time and effort in organising the outings.

Sponsorship

Finally I would like to express our thanks to our sponsors who have continued to support us.  Without them we would be unable to provide such good outings with worthwhile prizes which make our outings so attractive.  A special word of thanks to Tony Mooney who acts as our unofficial Purchasing Officer in procuring the fantastic range of prizes for our outings, and manages to get some great bargains in the process.

I am looking forward to another successful year in 2009 and hope we will have all your support. 

Thank you.

Jim Cushen

Hon Secretary