7.30 pm Friday 9th March 2018
To be held in the Chauncy Room, Hertford Club, Bull Plain, Hertford, SG14 1DT

The message below is published here on behalf of Alex Holowczak.

Thank you to those who responded to the original questionnaire.

After consulting with the ECF Board, players, captains, counties and unions, the first stage of this process generated results that have enabled us to come up with proposals contained in this consultation.

Open the attached newsletter to keep up to date with HCA activity. There's news on:

HCA Meetings
League Fixtures
Rules
ECF Game Fee
Herts & District League
County Teams
Herts Closed Championships

The Annual AGM was held at the Salisbury Arms Hotel in Hertford on Friday 14th July. The main points of the meeting are as follows:

1. Mike Price reported that the finances are in decline due to a drop in Vice Presidents and losses from the county teams. As a result VP frees were increased to £10 (from £7.50) and the club affilliation fee from £10 to £20.

2. Two motions were passed - AGM proposals now need a seconder, and the proposal deadline has been extended from May 1st to June 1st.

Several Officers Retired:

The county quarter-finals are now completed, and sadly despite fielding 3 teams thanks to successful qualifying campaigns, 2 fell at the first hurdle. The u160s lost by the narrowest of margins 7.5 - 8.5 to Yorkshire in a nail-biting contest, while the u140s went to Derby and lost 6-10 to Lancashire. However the u120s made a trip to Northampton where they recorded a fine 8-4 win over Nottinghamshire, and now face Essex at home in the semi-finals on June 10th.

The ECF Quarter-Final draws have been announced. The U120s play Notts on May13th with the U160s facing Yorkshire on the same day. The U140s have a trip to Lancashire on May21st

The U120 team beat SCCU champions-elect 8-4 on Saturday, and although finishing fourth, have managed to secure an ECF nomination due to Kent not accepting their nomination. As a result Herts have a clean sweep of county teams, with all 3 teams entering making it through to the national stages.

After the weak team we fielded in February, it was with some relief we sent a stronger side out to face Cambridgeshire and Suffolk in our final round of matches on Sunday. The Cambridgeshire match in the morning was critical, as victory would guarantee our qualification for the ECF national stages of the County Championships. I don't know what the team had for breakfast, but the result was remarkable, as we beat Cambridgeshire by 11-5, the widest margin of victory I can recall us recording against Cambridgeshire.

A 7-9 loss to recurring SCCU champions Kent on Saturday was a much better performance than our showing at Surrey 3 weeks earlier. ECF Qualification has been secured with an S3 place behind Kent(S1) and Essex(S2). Wins for Wali, Terry O'Sullivan, Austin McMahon, Andrew Smith and Peter Seeley weren't quite enough on the day, but we go into the nationals full on confidence. Andrew Smith has kindly made his game available

After the successful results back in October when we won both our matches, I had hoped that success might act as a spur to other players to take part, and ensure that momentum was maintained that would see us qualify for the ECF stages of the County Championships. We were able to welcome four new players for their first matches for Herts U160, Paul Walton, Andrew Smith, Francois Swiegers and Ger Reilly, but with an average grade of under 136, our team was statistically the weakest team we have fielded since we joined EACU in 2012.