Full AGM Report

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, the resolution to amend the rules of the club was passed at the AGM. The full story would be that the motion was passed with votes of; 645 for, 90 against with about 4,200 abstentions. (!)

The following presentations were made:

The batting award for last season went to Darren Maddy and
The allrounder award went to Tim Ambrose (not present).

Dougie Brown was given a warm round of applause in recognition of the service he has given the club, and looked slightly uncomfortable with all the attention.

I picked up on the following points;

By looking through the club annual report and deducting the "shop overheads" and the "shop cost of sales" from the "shop sales" you get a total for 2006 of£38,483. For 2007 that figure is £4,853. This seems shockingly low to me, and shows a 35% drop in sales, whilst in the same time costs rose by 14%. However you mess with the figures however, a sub-£5000 retail (gross) profit, that has such a level of footfall past (and through) its doors is a shocking performance. I expect the club would say this is due to a change in stock, refits, etc, but I would therefore expect to see a much improved performance this year.

I will deal with the stadium, ground plans and international staging agreements in a later post, along with the attached increase in borrowing powers in the new rules, as this all seems to fit together into one overall issue.

Neil Houghton (Chairman) mentioned one interesting point about the appointment of Giles. He admitted in his speech that they wanted to appoint a successor to Greatbatch as soon as possible and preferably before the players went on their winter break. This contrasts quite sharply with Povey's statements at the time that the club would take their time to find the right candidate.

The Treasurer, SG Mills, made an entertaining speech, given that he was presenting the accounts. Apart from some bizarre comment about wanting to play playstation with a U-15 girls team award winner called Laura Croft, which he opened with to general confusion. He said the club are aiming for a £500k operating profit this year and confirmed that last year there was a significant increase in expenses due to the new offices installed and the increase in marketing and PR (+24%), which he explained as investments in the future.
He went onto to make a couple of entertaining statements, that he was at pains to point out were his own and not the clubs. He predicted that within the next 3-5 years a county club would go into administration and predicted that it would be one of the ones pouring money into improving the ground chasing the international cricket bounty. He did emphasise his own ambition but also financial prudence and said it would not be Warwickshire. He also said that the media and not the ECB runs English cricket!

Chris Tickle then took the podium to explain some of the rule changes and was at pains to point out that most of the changes were to add a practical and flexible approach to the management and day-to-day running of the club. He did also mention one thing that struck me, but was hidden away somewhat, and that was the potential for the club to operate through other structures, such as subsidiaries and joint ventures. This got me thinking about whether they plan to involve a joint venture in the building of the new stadium.

While the votes were counted Ashley Giles gave a speech on the upcoming season that was quote-a-rific. He appeared relaxed and was his usual candid self, but there did seem to be a bit of nervousness about him. He began in typical Giles fashion; "I'm not perfect, I make mistakes and I'm sure I'll make some this summer."
He went onto say, "the team had been slack in some areas over the past 2 years and in some basic disciplines". "Hard work is key..I want this to be the fittest team in the country..and have already seen a big change in attitude and fitness". He stated his belief that hard work and success will bring enjoyment back into the team and the supporters.
On the season's targets he said; "we want to get back to where we belong, we are aiming to get back into the top flight this year..I can't promise this will happen but it is the aim". He finished by assuring members that his England selectors job is subordinate to his role at Edgbaston and will not get in the way.

Colin Povey then finished up the speeches for the evening in his usual style. He has the ability to not be especially boring but talks in such a way that you find yourself drifting off while talk of "value streams" and "partnerships" washes over you. I have to confess I was writing down notes, but fighting the urge to join the member next to me in having a quiet nap while he talked.

As I said I will wrap up his speech on the ground plans and the related bits the rest of the panel talked about in another post.

There was just time for some questions, including one insightful guy, who spoke for 5 minutes, where his only question, which he pointed out he felt he had asked at the members forum in November and hadn't been answered then (shock!) - 'when Dale Steyn was with us he took a lot of wickets, when he left we didn't take a lot of wickets. Did Colin Povey think that when Dale Steyn left we stopped taking wickets and were not as good?' Now I might not have got all the nuances in this Machiavellian logic train, so apologies from my clumsy treatment of such an insight. I don't like Povey but he could have beat this man to death with a microphone and claimed the hand of Darwin.