Jan 2020 Newsletter: VVGC

Veterans Golf Club of Victoria

January 2020 Newsletter

President:

President Donald welcomed all of us to the first event of the 2020 season at Keysborough Golf Club and the stableford competition for the Bill Fitzsimmons Trophy. On a very pleasant morning, the course was in excellent condition, no doubt as a consequence of the Pro-Am event scheduled there in the next few days. The course at Keysborough presents a fair but challenging test to our members. He asked all present to thank the club for the use of their facilities, and their generous donation of our main raffle prize, a voucher for a round of golf for 4 players plus 2 carts at Keysborough GC.

**Sunrise in the smoke**.
While the sun at Keysborough really did look like this, I'm sure many had better cameras than me to record the smoke induced colour.

Number of Players / Guests:

We had an excellent turnout today despite this being the festive holiday period, traditionally a slow period for the club. We had 66 players involved in the competition even though there were a reasonable number of apologies. We had 4 guests today;

John Marshall, guest of George Weaver, Jeff Casely, guest of Ian Cornish, Robin Bray, guest of Roger Huxstep. Our sponsor, Innes Ireland from House of Golf, Moorabbin also joined us as a guest today.
Both John and Jeff joined the Club today which is terrific news. Welcome to you both, may you enjoy many years as members of the Vets. As is our custom, each guest received a golf ball.

Apologies:

There were 14 apologies noted for this month:
Hans Bleeker, Rex Buckeridge, Peter Charlewood, Bernie Coyle, Bill Cribbes, Dave Cureton, John Farrow, John Field, Donald Harrowell, Bernie Herbert, Alan Millard, Sam Pilcher, Ross Wilson & Colin Wiseman.

Starters today:

Donald and the members thanked Roger Selwood, Jeff Stevens and Philip Horsburgh who got us all away in good time. Excellent work guys!

Please take pride in your club and always ensure that you "keep up with the group in front of you". That is the number one priority we have in terms of efficient golf. Remember the new rules of golf encourage 'ready golf'

Each month Captain Harold emails registered playing members with the actual starting time a day or two before the event. Please ensure you are registered with the starters at least 15 and preferably 30 minutes before that time.

Membership News.

Donald informed us that the 2020 AGM will take place in 3 weeks time at Rossdale Golf Club on Monday 3rd February following our monthly competition and lunch.
The AGM will be held immediately after our lunch and prize giving ceremony. Secretary Jeff will forward a package of the required documentation by either email or post to each member in the next 7 days. This will include nomination forms for any of the Committee positions. These should be completed and returned to Jeff by the latest, 23rd February. Similarly with the proxy forms please. Also included in the package will be the agenda for the AGM, which includes members voting on the proposed members fees as stated in the Treasurer's Report for 2019 contained in the package. Thereafter, members will be required to pay their "annual subs" which are due by the end of March 2020, in order to retain their membership of the Vets. It is important that we have a healthy attendance at the AGM to ensure members participate in the running of their club.

CoM Business:

Summary of the business matters being addressed by your Committee of Management.

Progress continues with the need for each member to have an official GolfLink number. We are down to 3 or 4 members still needing to arrange their GolfLink number. Immediately after the 2020 AGM, all current members will have a valid and active number otherwise they will be unable to play with the Club.
Review of rules of association of the Club and supporting By-Laws continues to progress. A sub-committee will complete this work, present it to the full committee for approval, prior to circulating these documents to the members for approval at an Special General Meeting later in the year. Our goals remain:
1. to comply with the Victorian legislation for Corporate Organisations to ensure that members are fully covered by relevant insurance and Committee members are safe from unfair legal repercussions of their decisions.
2. operational efficiency via relevant by-laws specific to our Club.
Succession Planning remains critical to the success of our Club, this task is ongoing.
A membership Secretary role will be assigned post AGM, to focus on both the acquisition of new members and the retention of existing members. If we are to grow the Club to a sustainable level, this function is vital.

Special Achievements:

In the past month or so these achievements were noted;

Peter Fisher won the Wednesday comp at Brighton GC on Dec 18th with a score of 82 (stroke) resulting in a net score of 60. Congratulations Peter! Well played.
Also at Brighton, Bill Dooley recently had the undoubted pleasure of a hole-in-one at the 3rd hole. Magnificent shot Bill! Mine's a malt whisky thanks!

We look forward to hearing of more success on the golf course in the coming weeks.

Congratulations to all our Vets winners.

Vets Web Site:

The website continues to underpin the smooth operation of our great Club.

As mentioned in the notes on the Committee above, succession planning for the Web site remains a critical item for the Club. It is extremely unlikely that the Club will find a member with the time and background skills to run the website when Laurie finally ceases to do it. So our succession planning must involve having a team of members to perform this task with each having the skills and time to support a subset of the running the web tasks.

About the website, if you have any ideas or queries, please contact Webmaster Laurie by email (details on the members database).

Question time:

There being no member's questions, President Donald then handed over to our Captain, Harold Hayes.

Web report

This is a precis prepared by Rod Goode of the full report

The Club's Website is complete and adequate for the club needs. However, new improvements continue to be made. Further suggestion for improvements are always welcome and obviously have an associated work load. Currently I average over 15 hours a week on website work.

The Club needs to work towards reducing this personal workload and to create in house skills to run the web site. For this the assistance by several members working as a team is required. None of the tasks individually require significant computer skills. All software needed is free and I will provide detailed notes and individual training as required. The range of tasks cover:

WE NEED MEMBER VOLUNTEERS

Proof reading: A person prepared to read the new newsletter each month is required who will check for errors and report back. Member Rod Goode has offered to do this task and has already flagged to changes to this newsletter.
Database maintenance: Accuracy of information in the Club's database is essential for running of the Club. Information may be incorrect, or become incorrect over time. For example, the booking sheet immediately prior to the event, needs to be updated to the actual list of players on the day. Handicapper Ray provides a sheet with the actual players on it. A member is needed to get this information from Ray and update the database.
Database backup: The contents of the Club's database are essential to the Club's operation. It is possible that our web host could lose the contents of our database through hacking or system failure. Roger Huxstep creates a fully independent backup each month.
Uploading files to the web site: We will have many files (newsletters, images, reports) to be uploaded to the web site. These files can be produced by members who may not have the skills to upload them. It is essential that several club members have this uploading capability, not just the Webmaster who may not be available.
Image manipulation: Images used on our web site come from cameras, or are found by Google Image search. Generally, the images need editing for use on the Club's web site. These image editing tasks of Cropping, Resizing, Cutting and pasting, Image enhancement and can be carried by a range of free software.
Images used on the web must be named with a file name consistent with the web site protocols. As an example all the members headshots on the Members Contact page are named with the members database number.

Newsletters preparation & publishing: The newsletter page is a shell which displays other information. Still the time required for preparation of the newsletters each month under present arrangements is unacceptably high for one person. Assistance by several club members to contribute independent segments can reduce the time required to an acceptable level. The following segments could be undertaken independently or members undertake more than one segment.
1. Newsletter index: This is fully automated. If an appropriately named file exists the coding will identify it and include it in the index.
2. Presidents report: The President prepares this and sends by email. It is then proof read, edited and the presentation improved if necessary. The Newsletter page coding looks for a file with the relevant name and then displays it.
3. Results report: The Results report is almost fully automated. Handicapper Ray enters the results of the day into the database from where the report section finds them and displays them in a standardised format.
4. Birthdays report: This report is fully automated other than tghe provision each month of a suitable image.
5. Jokes: Many jokes are on file but one joke a month is enough. They are written in separate files and loaded into the newsletter in the same way as the Presidents and Captains reports. Finding and preparing images to suit the joke can be time-consuming. An area where a team member could assist.
6. Printing: Each month all members with interent access receive notification of posting of the newsletter. Four members without internet access have printed versions mailed to them by Secretary Jeff. The printed versions do not display the images. Printing this version to PDF file for paper printing could easily be carried out by a newsletter team member.
7. Other reports: From time to time other reports are included in the Newsletter or prepared for the Committee. These are written in separate files. Any member could write a report for inclusion.
  Annual Presentation event report. This takes several hours to prepare as all images need to have the people involved identified, photos tidied up and renamed, key photos prepared.
8. Members photos: John Molloy has undertaken the most of photography required while Gary Finnis has a long history of providing photgraphs for the web site.

We must develop the inhouse skills and get enough members to do all the above items or look at potentially thousands of dollars per year for professional help.

captain

Results:

Overall winner:

Noel Valle (28) with 43 points won the Bill Fitzsimmons Trophy

Our winners receive a $40 House of Golf voucher for their effort.

Grade winners

A Grade: Trevor Bottomley (12) 41 points

B Grade: Christopher Tierney (28) 38 points

C Grade: George Giles (36) 40 points

Nearest to the Pin:

3^rd hole: Donald Barber 8^th hole: Donald Barber

12^th hole: John Molloy 15^th hole: Bill Dooley

Captain joke image not yet available — Need we say more

Balls down the line:

39 points Gary Morland (19) David Vine (18)

38 points Robin Bray (16) Declan Stephenson (27) Gary Finnis (27)

37 points George Weaver (16) Donald Barber (13) Bruce Keenan (26)

36 points Chris Procter (23)

NAGA Award:

Alex Johnson

Door prize Winners:

Jeff Stevens celebrated his good day at Keysborough by winning the raffle allowing him and three of his friends to play again at Keysborough.
With sufficient ingenuity anything will do.

The hairdreser
A woman was at her hairdresser's getting her hair styled for a trip to Rome with her husband. She mentioned the trip to the hairdresser, who responded: "Rome? Why would anyone want to go there? It's crowded and dirty. You're crazy to go to Rome. So, how are you getting there?"
"We're taking Continental," was the reply. "We got a great rate!"
"Continental?" exclaimed the hairdresser. "That's a terrible airline. Their planes are old, their flight attendants are ugly, and they're always late. So, where are you staying in Rome?"
"We'll be at this exclusive little place over on Rome's Tiber River called Teste."
"Don't go any further. I know that place. Everybody thinks it's going to be something special and exclusive, but it's really a dump."
"We're going to go to see the Vatican and maybe get to see the Pope."
"That's rich," laughed the hairdresser. "You and a million other people trying to see him. He'll look the size of an ant. Boy, good luck on this lousy trip of yours. You're going to need it."
A month later, the woman again came in for a hairdo. The hairdresser asked her about her trip to Rome.
"It was wonderful," explained the woman, "not only were we on time in one of Continental's brand new planes, but it was overbooked, and they bumped us up to first class. The food and wine were wonderful, and I had a handsome 28-year-old steward who waited on me hand and foot. And the hotel was great! They'd just finished a $5 million remodelling job, and now it's a jewel, the finest hotel in the city. They, too, were overbooked, so they apologized and gave us their owner's suite at no extra charge!"
"Well," muttered the hairdresser, "that's all well and good, but I know you didn't get to see the Pope."
"Actually, we were quite lucky, because as we toured the Vatican, a Swiss Guard tapped me on the shoulder, and explained that the Pope likes to meet some of the visitors, and if I'd be so kind as to step into his private room and wait, the Pope would personally greet me. Sure enough, five minutes later, the Pope walked through the door and shook my hand! I knelt down and he spoke a few words to me."
"Oh, really! What'd he say?"
He said:
"Who mucked up your hair?"