First Council papers go out - Hurrah!

I've had my head down the past few weeks getting all the main papers and Resolutions ready for the July WCF Council meeting.  The Management Committee has taken the responses from the two big consultations we ran recently - on the 10 Year Schedule of events and Decision-making in the WCF - and produced some Resolutions to Council which, if approved, would give us a clear long-term programme of events and radically improve how the Members control the WCF.  Of course, we didn't get everything right in our original consultation proposals, so we have taken the comments made on board and revised the ideas in these Resolutions.

Feedback on the 10 Year Schedule was very positive, but there were several comments that there were just too many events, and also concerns about the funding model for team events and how Knock-Outs are seeded.  So in the revised 10 Year Schedule that goes to Council for approval, we have reduced the frequency of some events while keeping the premier singles events every two years and world team championships every 4 years.  We've also dealt with the other two issues raised.

The responses to the Decision-making consultation were very positive except from one Member, whose circumstances are perhaps different to most: they are a federal body representing a number of independent state administrations.  I can appreciate they will find it harder than most to consult with their member administrations and collate their responses in the proposed new model, where issues are debated in email cycles and brought to a vote.  We've made a few changes suggested and will see what the Members think.

We also have Resolutions to ratify the new WCF Finance Regs and to accept the recommendations of the WCF Ranking Review Committee, which has been examing the AC world ranking system.  They have concluded a fairer representation of a player's current form would be given by a new Dynamic Grading system in place of the current CGS.  It removes the amount of lag before new results make a major impact on your grade.  You can check the system already - if you go to the World Rankings site http://butedock.demon.co.uk/cgs/rank.php, you'll find Statto has added  a Dynamic Grade radio button.  If you click that, you'll see how your position changes under the new system.  It must be a better system, I'm 11 places higher!

This isn't all the papers for Council.  While these had to be distributed 60 days before the Council meeting, there will be some supporting documents that go out 30 days before (17th June).  I'm working on those already, including the annual MC Report.  We should also have applications to join from:

• Croquet Federation of India
• Pakistan Croquet Federation
• Latvian Croquet Federation.

That will take us to 30 Members.  If we can reach 40, then we can start thinking about World Games, the Olypmics and so on.  Perhaps that's a good goal to set for 2020.  I'm drafting our Business Plan at the moment, and that gives me an idea....

Martin French
Secretary-General