The club’s Annual General Meeting will be on Monday 16th November from 7.15pm in the Strangford Arms Hotel, Newtownards. This is your chance to decide how the club should be run and what we should do, so please come along and have your say.
This is also a good time to reflect on what we’ve achieved over the last year. As often, the following article is an editorial piece. It does not necessarily represent the views of the committee, but will hopefully promote some constructive debate.
At last year’s AGM, we discussed our strategy, and agreed on 4 key conclusions. Let’s look at each of these –
- Club runs, the Tour of Strangford Sportive and our club race program are our most popular activities with members, and we should continue to develop and grow them;
I think this area has been a huge success. Our club runs are very popular, we’ve a new ladies run, and there are numerous adhoc runs organised through Facebook. Our club race programme is also very popular, although there is perhaps some mileage in looking at how we better align our club competitions to reflect the most popular type of events.
The Tour of Strangford also attracted a big entry, although it was down on last year. This might have been due to the poor weather forecast before the event and/or the increased distance. Perhaps we should look at having two distances next year?
2. We have a long history of promoting excellent open races, and we should continue with our current events (Tour of Ards, Champions of Champions 25 and the Town Centre races);
This area too was a huge success. The Tour of Ards winner went on to win the Irish Senior road race title so you can’t ask for more than that. The town centre races also attracted a big field.
3. Seven or eight members expressed interest in riding open road races. There was also a feeling that we should do more to encourage females. We will try to develop these two areas next year;
The new ladies run on a Saturday morning has been brilliant! And more than 20 new women have joined the club since it started in September. Excellent!
Several members competed in open events this year. The most recent highlight was Richard Topping’s win in the A4 race in Bangor. In the end of year rankings we have 6 riders in the A3 tables and 4 in the A4 tables – Gareth Murray was our highest placed rider at 90th in the A3s. This is an improvement on previous years, but it felt like our efforts in open events were a bit sporadic and unplanned. Perhaps we need to put some more effort into coaching and planning. The fact that we’ve got no A1 or A2 riders doesn’t accurately reflect the level of talent we have in the club.
4. Growing our underage membership, and resurrecting an Ards CC stage race were also identified as things we’d like to do in the future, but are not priorities in the short term.
Underage membership remains a difficult area. We now have no schoolboy riders and just one junior, which I think is a sad state of affairs for any sports club. I was at the Ulster Schools swimming championships recently, and there were 1100 competitors in the 8-13 age category. That’s amazing for a sport that isn’t half as exciting as cycling! And we know from our own experience of the novice event at the town centre races, and the number of kids queuing to take part in our roller racing, that there is huge demand out there. The difficult bit is translating this initial interest into ongoing, safe, participation. But some clubs, like Banbridge CC, do manage this successfully. Let’s talk about this at the AGM!
Anything else?
What about cycle campaigning. The new Ards and North Down council is currently looking for input on local Community Planning. Should the club be campaigning for more cycle paths or safe refuge areas at traffic lights (like they have in Belfast)?
With so many new members there are bound to be lots of other new ideas too. Let’s hear them!