Saturday, September 11, 2010

National Championships

I am contacting you on behalf of the Horowhenua Petanque Club Committee (I am not a member) to try and get as wide a distribution as possible for the attached paper (see link at end of this post).

The paper is self-explanatory. It deals with a decision by the PNZ Board to only run National tournaments at the 3 main centres – Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. The Board has even made a decision on the clubs in each region at which these tournaments will be run. In the case of the our region, the WPA, the clubs chosen are – Park Avenue and Kapiti. The criteria used to select these clubs are “Cost and Accessibility”. Even a cursory glance will tell you that there is little or no difference in cost of travel etc and accessibility between several clubs in the WPA, such as Manawatu, Horowhenua, Otaki and Kapiti/Park Avenue.

If you further look at facilities at the clubs you find that clubs such as Horowhenua and Manawatu win hands down in terms of clubhouse, toilets etc.

We are not asking for any special favours in this. All we are asking for is a level playing field in which we can bid for nationals (or even internationals) on our merits, and we dislike the draconian method of decision making by the Board which has not consulted us or our Regional Association.

Kind Regards,
Bryan Wells on behalf of the Horowhenua Petanque Club Committee.

Go to Paper

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

not very often do i find myself agreeing with bryan wells but on this occasion the horowhanua club has every right to express their concern. If the PNZ is serious about growing the sport they would not limit it to the main centres. Any club should have the right to bid to host a national tournament. PNZ will still hold the final decision and if a club bids and the tournament is not up to standard then i think that club would struggle to get another one.
ON this occasion i think the board and the shareholders( the Players) have been short sighted.
Why the players you ask? Well it is my understanding that this proposal was sent to clubs and the board got very little feedback regards to it.

Milano cavelcanti.

Anonymous said...

As far as I know this proposal was not sent to the Horowhenua Club. I am pretty sure that it did not go to the WPA either.
I am glad that we agree on one thing anyway - whoever you are - perhaps you can come out from behind your pseudonym!!

Bryan Wells

Anonymous said...

Further to my comment above, the Horowhenua club has hosted 2 national and 1 international tournaments in the past, and has received very positive feedback on its staging of these events.The reasons given by the Board for the dropping of the Horowhenua club from the ability to bid for further tournaments has been "cost and accessibility" If the Board had done its sums on the cost of getting to Levin for tournament participants from say, Auckland, they wiould know that this argument is completely specious.
Bryan

Anonymous said...

I have checked with the Secretary of the Horowhenua Club, and there was definitely no communication from the PNZ Board or the WPA Committee on this subject prior to the club receiving an email from the secretary of the PNZ Board telling the club of the Board decision.
I cannot vouch for what part the WPA committee played in the decision making.

Bryan Wells

NZPC Editor (Tom) said...

Because of "Milano cavelcanti" I have reinstated the Moderation feature of our Blog. This means your comments will only appear after the moderation process has been completed. As petanque players we will not be able to have a meaningful dialog if people are going to shelter behind pseudonyms. Despite the measured comment (no attack on anyone) "Milano cavelcanti" felt too frightened to sign off with his/her real name.

Please remember your opinions count for nothing if you are not prepared to front up with your name.