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September 2020 Meeting Minutes

Published November 2020

Minutes of the Committee Meeting of the DBA held online via Zoom on 23 Sep 2020.

The meeting opened at 5pm.

1. Present: (Chair) Geoff Clements; (Secretary) Doug Dunn; (North) Neil Marsden; (North) Elizabeth Nunn; (East) Jean Harrison; (Western League) Andrew Leslie; (online sub-committee) Jacqui Munns.
Apologies: Betty Golding, Dave Strawbridge.

2. Previous Minutes

Minutes were accepted. Approved JM, seconded EN.

3. Section Reports

North Section are playing online pairs regularly on Wed afternoons and in the North Devon Teams league. The Filleigh Swiss Teams has unfortunately been cancelled.
East Section is trialling Real Bridge on Friday afternoons. Thanks are given to Malcolm Boyack for leading these and for providing online director training. JH to find out who owns Real Bridge. Running duplicates with Real Bridge does not preclude the EBU as the results files will be sent to them. Online committee to discuss further.

4. Competition Report by Terence T

Andrew L withdrew his motions. Instead the Chairman led a discussion which resulted in the following decisions being made:

The date for the 2021 AGM was set for Sunday 11th July. It was agreed to follow TT’s venue recommendation being the Bovey Tracey Golf Centre. It would satisfy all our space and catering requirements at an affordable price.

Face-to-face bridge completions are not likely to take place in the medium future. That being the case, there was an agreement sadly to cancel next year’s Devon Congress. The online bridge sub-committee will look at the possibility of replacing it by an online congress.

Other cancellations of face-to-face competitions will be the Southern Section League and the Winter Pairs. No dates would be set for the Devon Pairs or Teams of 8 but the online bridge sub-committee will discuss the possibility of playing these competitions online.

5. Inter-County Teams

Thanks to Andrew L, the first of the online inter-county friendly kicked off on 12 September.  His report about inter-county friendlies was circulated to the committee.  In summary:
There seems to be less people interested in playing county matches online.
The number of selectors for B and C divisions are down to 3 from 4.
The selection process for B and C teams seems to be from Sections in turn rather than county wide as proposed by DBA.
Western League have suggested designating one person for each division to organize matches. To be discussed by the online committee.
Local selectors are being approached to form a possible D Team.

West Midlands BC have invited Devon to play in an online teams of 8 competition.

5. Online Sub-Committee

Thanks to Jean for taking notes from the September online bridge sub-committee meeting:
There was a delay initially with moving to online bridge. Now there is a lot of online play.
The sub-committee discussed reasons why people play bridge; social, master points. Out of the 900 they are checking how many are playing online.
Provision is being made for training with online play and bridge teaching to bring in new members to clubs. They are planning to use Real Bridge for teaching and the possible use of “Shark Bridge”.
Jacqui M is being trained up to become an online TD for the Wed DBA virtual pairs.
The sub-committee will come to the DBA for support with funding and playability.

Thanks were given to Terrence T for setting up and directing the DBA weekly pairs and all the work his has done for bridge competitions and other activities.

6. Amendments to Rulebook (circulated at last meeting)

The changes are related to online competition play. After discussion it was thought that changes cannot be made to the competition rulebook outside of an AGM. To be clarified at the next online bridge sub-committee.

7. Any Other Business

None.

 

Meeting ended 6.30pm.

Thank you all for keeping discussions brief and purposeful.

9. Date of Next meeting

28 October 2020, 5pm