Essex Outfielder : The Unofficial Essex CCC Forum
Club Administration => Club Administration => Topic started by: pablo on October 19, 2016, 12:09:17 PM
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Today I have received a voting form and supporting material asking me to support a streamlining of the club's management structure which suggests reducing the number of elected members of the committee from 15 to 9 but with the power to co-opt three 'specialists' as advisers. All sub- committees would be abolished.
I wondered what others thought of this proposal? The rationale as given is that in an increasingly fast moving commercial world we need more 'professionalism' - as provided presumably by co-opted specialists- and a quicker decision making process.
I have not been a fan of the arcane structure of the club and at first glance this seems a reasonable proposal for change to a structure that has brought us - inter alia- the ground redevelopment fiasco.
On the other hand this seems to me to be a diminution of democracy- if that's not too pompous a phrase- and a further concentration of power in the hands of the usual old guard which will be supplemented by a hand picked un-elected coterie. In the past- although the Acfields, Savilles, Hilliards of this world are routinely re elected because they are most known ( and will be again presumably)- sometimes somebody outside of the usual clique finds themselves elected and, although out gunned and outnumbered, may actually represent the wants and wishes of the great unwashed of the membership. This is less likely by definition in future.
I am also not convinced of the rationale given. We are forever being told about the club's commercial successes which seems a relatively autonomous part of the operation anyway so what is the necessity for change on this basis.
I guess I am always suspicious of constitutional change because I always ask ' In whose interest is this?' but I could be persuaded to support it even if my gut instinct is not to. I'd welcome others views.
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I will be voting against.
I am opposed to rules on the ages of committee members.
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Are all members receiving this? As a member I haven't received anything yet.
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Nor have I ...
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Got mine
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My postman is off today, he's having stitches removed, expect I'll get it tomorrow.
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Received my form Weds , Good points made by Pablo for and against the proposal .
Do we want less committee's and committee members and more emphasis on some skilled personal with the risk of general dominance ?
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Inclined to agree with Pablo and vote against, on the “in whose interests is this” grounds.
First of all I’m very concerned by the lack of opportunity for discussion. There’s not been a lot here .... I think that when the letter arived was any of us knew about them, the Facebook site has nothing relevant (could say ever) and these proposals have never been put up for discussion (!) or even mentioned on the Clubs own website. It’s not even as though there’ll be opportunity for discussion at the SGM, which, although not necessarily easy to attend for reasons which have been discussed here ad nauseam, could at least provide an opportunity for an exchange of views.
I like the idea of a more streamlined management, although removing the Cricket Committee does reduce the opportunity for ordinary members to contact cricket committee memebers with their views; after all this is a cricket club, and many members have considerable experience and knowledge of the game. The Cricket Advisory Committee does sound as though it could be the Chairman’s mates! Plus perhaps the Chair of the ECCB.
Having said all that, there is still the question of the Ground Redevelopment, which, one way or another seems to be stalled. To be fair, I haven’t been to Chelmsford lately to see whther any new building work is taking place. Is it? If an Executive Committee, which presumably can take decisions much more quickly can ensure some progress is made on this that would be a Good Thing!
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I have one and will vote in favour.
A few years back SLU and his mate Bob and I met in the pub to talk about how the club could be improved. As all of us have significant management experience, we all at the time felt that we needed to streamline the committee system significantly.
I believe this does it.
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I’m not convinced by these changes either, and will be voting against unless someone can convince me otherwise in the next few weeks. Superficially, they seem to be what many people on this board have advocated for a long while, ie streamlining the committee structure and abolishing the cricket committee. But as the old saying goes, be careful what you wish for.
The “Cricket Advisory Group” which will replace the Cricket Committee, will have its chairman elected by the main committee, but the composition and terms of reference of the Group will be determined by the new executive board. Members would have no direct say in this and there is no need for any of this group , except the chairman, to be a member of the club. At present the Cricket Committee has to consist of main committee members plus other co-opted people who must themselves be members of the club (Rule 11.3) and can only serve until the next AGM. Now, if the intention is to have a Cricket Advisory Group consisting of, say, the chairman of Cricket (ie Mr Irani) plus the coaches and captains, that would be fine in my book, and moves us closer to the “Director of Cricket plus coaches model” that I think we should have had long ago. But as SquareLegUmp observes, this could easily just become the chairman’s mates club, completely beyond any powers of the membership to control or remove.
Also, as I read the present rules the main Committee can only co-opt a maximum of two people (Rule 10.1 as currently in force) who can only serve until the next AGM when they have to stand for election in the normal way if they wish to continue. The proposed new rule 10.1 increases this to three, but three more people, who don’t need to be members, can be co-opted on to the new exec board under proposed new rule 11.2, and as far as I can see they can stay indefinitely as long as the main committee allows, and they can even be substituted by others. So, we could have six unelected people-three on the main committee, three on the exec board-and an unlimited additional number on each of the Advisory Groups, as determined by the exec board.
Obviously there is a need sometimes to co-opt experts to deal with particular problems but this goes too far, and the club needs to explain why these sweeping powers are needed.
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I am an Essex and Sussex member, and the same change was implemented at Sussex two to three years ago.
Since this has happened, plenty of members have regretted it for a whole host of reasons. When I have more time I will try and go into them in details.
This is being driven by the ECB, so you already need to be suspicious, as I don't see Yorkshire or Surrey being asked to do it(read between the lines!)
I have voted 'no', and really regret it ever happened at Sussex.
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Less old farts sounds good to me.
No way would Grayson have been able to hang around as long as he did with a proper management structure in place.
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I have one and will vote in favour.
A few years back SLU and his mate Bob and I met in the pub to talk about how the club could be improved. As all of us have significant management experience, we all at the time felt that we needed to streamline the committee system significantly.
I believe this does it.
I’ve not backed away, Blocky; in my post I said that "I like the idea of a more streamlined management.” I am, though concerned at the way this is structured; it will give more power to the Executive, without any corresponding opportunity to the members to contribute. Take the point of course that I can’t have the penny and the bun!
And I still don’t like the way it is being done.
VP, if you suspect that our former coach was only kept in his post by an alliance with the then CC chair, how much worse could it be under the proposed regime?
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Less old farts sounds good to me.
No way would Grayson have been able to hang around as long as he did with a proper management structure in place.
Maybe but beware the law of unintended consequences.
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Got my letter today and voted (no) by return.
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Pity this proposal couldn't have been raised during the season when members could easily talk to representatives of the club during matches, ah , I think I've just worked something out.......
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Change is definitely required, but I am not sure this is the best solution. Do we know of any alternative models that have been successful?
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I'd be interested in knowing why some think the ECB is behind this. If they are I'm definitely in the no camp !
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I'd be interested in knowing why some think the ECB is behind this. If they are I'm definitely in the no camp !
At Sussex the ECB funded exactly the same constitutional changes e.g the reduction in board size and the merger of first class and recreational cricket. Many see it as a pre-precursor to a watering down of smaller counties power, they potentially now become cricket centres responsible for all cricket in an area, rather then a first class county. That is why it's interesting that counties the size of Sussex and Essex have been asked to do this, and also the Durham deal may need some scrutiny as well as the rescue package has a 'community' element to it.
At Sussex we have hired a Director of Cricket, who hardly works with the first team and spends most of his time talking to clubs. The boards of recreational cricket and first class Cricket have been merged and reduced in number, and now the Sussex board is far more focused on recreational cricket and I think results in the first team reflect this. The whole thing has become a massive distraction to how the first team is run. Our CEO resigned recently and if you read the new job description there is hardly a mention of first class Cricket, is his resignation linked to this? You also have a situation where some club sides in Sussex are in open revolt and talking about breakaway leagues due to interference from Hove, and I have read plenty of stuff recently about the CEO being involved in how the structure of the club Cricket is played.....Is this really the job of a county cricket club CEO? There are too many competing interests. I think Essex members need to ask themselves, what would these changes achieve, that cannot be achieved in the current structure? I have asked this at Sussex many times, and am waiting for a sensible answer.
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Yet, ironically, Sussex were the model of member activism whilst ECCC members lie down and think of Doug Insole.
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Thanks to SilasGreenback for that post. I am very much leaning to vote against the proposed changes but would be interested to hear views and opinions from those who are in favour.
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interesting. Subsequent to mr Greenback's post, I have now withdrawn my vote....
I shall attend the meeting though, I'm being told there may well be an appearance by Graves.....
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I wonder, if this is at the behest of the ECB, is there a connection to their review of the funding model, referred to in the Durham thread? County cricket is in a poor position at the moment, being financially dependent on the ECB funding (which is largely raised by England tests, ODIs and T20) to break even, while failing to develop enough players of acceptable standard for 18 counties. Our increasing reliance on players who learned their cricket overseas but are not counted as overseas players (5 now) being one example. Add the falling numbers of people playing club cricket, fewer clubs and fewer teams within many clubs and the general low level of public interest in the sport, and perhaps the ECB should be looking for radical ideas to revive the best sport there is.
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I wonder, if this is at the behest of the ECB, is there a connection to their review of the funding model, referred to in the Durham thread? County cricket is in a poor position at the moment, being financially dependent on the ECB funding (which is largely raised by England tests, ODIs and T20) to break even, while failing to develop enough players of acceptable standard for 18 counties. Our increasing reliance on players who learned their cricket overseas but are not counted as overseas players (5 now) being one example. Add the falling numbers of people playing club cricket, fewer clubs and fewer teams within many clubs and the general low level of public interest in the sport, and perhaps the ECB should be looking for radical ideas to revive the best sport there is.
...and those radical ideas being ...?
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The counties have always been dependent on central funding in exchange for producing England cricketers and forming centres of excellence i.e. cricket schools, coaching and outreach work with clubs and schools. in fact with the success of 20;20 that dependency should be less than ever but the ECB's insistence on increasing the number of test venues have caused the problems and the decline in interest is the result of the ECB's short termism in selling out to Sky. It is not true that other offers were not on the table- they just didn't pay as much.Unfortunately for the ECB the most financially sound counties are the smaller ones ( Northants exepted) i.e. us,Somerset,Sussex and, believe it or not Derby who haven't produced an England cricketer since Cork. So in short most of the ills of the game in the UK are probably attributable to the ECB who in any event distribute less than a quarter of their income to the counties who seem to have produced a very effective and successful England team with - currently- few players of overseas origin, except Ballance, who we may be better off without anyway.
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Read my post Nat. I said they should be looking for radical ideas, not that I had any!
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I shall attend the meeting though, I'm being told there may well be an appearance by Graves.....
Wouldn't have though he would venture into the county at this particular moment in time. Not the flavour of month after we delayed his T20 ambitions!!!
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The counties have always been dependent on central funding in exchange for producing England cricketers and forming centres of excellence i.e. cricket schools, coaching and outreach work with clubs and schools. in fact with the success of 20;20 that dependency should be less than ever but the ECB's insistence on increasing the number of test venues have caused the problems and the decline in interest is the result of the ECB's short termism in selling out to Sky. It is not true that other offers were not on the table- they just didn't pay as much.Unfortunately for the ECB the most financially sound counties are the smaller ones ( Northants exepted) i.e. us,Somerset,Sussex and, believe it or not Derby who haven't produced an England cricketer since Cork. So in short most of the ills of the game in the UK are probably attributable to the ECB who in any event distribute less than a quarter of their income to the counties who seem to have produced a very effective and successful England team with - currently- few players of overseas origin, except Ballance, who we may be better off without anyway.
Excellent analysis Pablo.
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Make sure you remember to post your vote and have your say.
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Passed at SGM , 93% in favour ( 1, 646 received ) .
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Passed at SGM , 93% in favour ( 1, 646 received ) .
The club were quick to get the 'good' news out. Good voter turnout.