The AGM was opened at 12.10 pm by the chairman, John Amery who welcomed everyone to the meeting. He commented that it was a good turn out of members.

APOLOGIES

Apologies had been received from Darren Phillips & Nick Haward.

MINUTES FROM THE PREVIOUS MEETING AND MATTERS ARISING

The minutes from the previous meeting were circulated prior to the meeting and were proposed as a true record by Hugh Rathbone and seconded by Eddie Painter. The only matter arising was brought to the attention of members by Andy was about the website, which had been put on hold until the outcome of the negotiations with AT. We had now commissioned Dene Conway to progress the website.

CHAIRMANS REPORT

John announced that his previous intention to stand down this year had been put on hold and that he was prepared to stay on for a further 12 months. The main reason for this was the problems surrounding the newly formed Angling Trust and our subsequent step back from integrating with them. He then went on to explain what the Angling Trust was trying to do and the problems they had been experiencing.

Everything else he wanted to say would be covered by the Agenda.

SECRETARIES REPORT

Andy explained about another difficult year with membership down again to 205 members, and out of 107 qualifiers only 50+ had entered the Masters. We had to cancel the Individual league final because of lack of interest, and no matter what we do it does not seem to have the desired effect. We have introduced size limits, converted back to weight and produced new venues to no avail.

There is too much infighting going on within the federation and this needs to stop, in this climate we all need to pull together if we are to succeed in taking the federation forward.

Once again this year there have been complaints about the lack of qualifying events, and Andy pointed out that any member can organise one. However we are aware that in some areas there are not enough anglers to fish qualifiers and travelling can be difficult and expensive these days. To try and overcome these problems and to boost entry to the Masters Andy proposed a two tier qualifying system, qualifying in the normal way, and he proposed that we should accept entries from members who have not qualified but are prepared to pay the full £20 qualifying entry money. This obviously goes against what the Masters was all about but times are changing and we need to do something to reverse the trend. Nobody had any objections about this so we will trial it for the 2010 Masters.

On a positive note Andy said he was pleased that John was staying on for another year, the challenge match in Holland had gone well and he congratulated the team, and also for the first time in a while we had actually used the selection process for the Forces Challenge.

Andy went on to thank the committee for their work, especially Eddie and Hugh for organising the Individual Leagues, Darren for organising the challenge matches, Nick for running the Pairs and John for all his support throughout the year. Andy also thanked members for their support and in particular those in attendance at the meeting.      

TREASURERS REPORT

Copies of the report had been circulated prior to the meeting and were accepted as a true record. There were no questions about the accounts. The following is the treasurers summary:

The above figures show that SAMFs worth is £6537.42 which is an increase of £229.87 from 2008. However we have to bear in mind that this year we have not had the Forces challenge yet and we had a free year from the NFSAS for the third party public liability insurance. If these figures were to be in the accounts this year then we would be showing a deficit. With only 147 members (202 members in total) renewing their annual subscription it did not give us much of a budget to play with this year. The steps we have taken in the past has largely done away with the losses we were suffering however it is obvious that our income is only just keeping the federation going, and this despite our running costs, such as postage, printing & stationary, telephone & broadband reducing by £545 this year. 

Despite all of this we are still in a relatively strong position, we just need to continue being careful with expenditure. For this reason I propose that SAMF subscriptions remain at £20 for 2010.

ELECTION OF OFFICERS

The following people were elected:

Chairman – John Amery

Vice Chairman – Eddie Painter

Secretary – Andy Steele

Treasurer – Mary Steele

AREA REPRESENTATIVES

South West Scotland – None

North West – Bill Lindfield

North Wales – Shane Russell

North East – Bob Gascoigne

Anglia – Ian Bowell

Sussex – None

Hants & Challenge Match organiser – Darren Phillips

Kent – Mark Rogers & Mick Davies

Essex – Ian Reynolds

South West – Hugh Rathbone

Individual League Organisers – Eddie Painter & Hugh Rathbone

South Wales – Joe Arch

Humberside – Rob Neale

DAIWA PAIRS

A report had been sent by Nick:

Despite the difficult financial climate, the SAMF 2009 Daiwa Irish Pairs again attracted a significant turnout with 120 anglers competing in this prestigious annual fishing week. As always the competition was very tough with Eammon Foggerty and Paul Whelan from Dublin taking top honours, with Colin Carey and Darren Bond in second place. A full report and result listings can be downloaded from www.irishpairs.co.uk

Because of problems with accommodation, HQ etc. this years event has been brought forward one day so that registration will be on Friday 24^th September and the first match will be on Saturday 25^th September. The prize presentation night will be Thursday 30^th September. Again full details are on the website.

INDIVIDUAL LEAGUE                   

Because of the lack of support this event has been cancelled

NATIONAL SEA LEAGUES

John reported that following the cancelling of the final in 2008 he had agreed to co-ordinate the event in 2009. He was pleased to report that there would be an entry of 29 teams to fish the final, which would be at Eastbounre 21/22 November.

Numbers had been boosted by allowing qualifiers from 2008 to enter this years final, as well as 2009 qualifiers. He stated that the entry illustrated that this is still a popular event and he hoped it could mover forward from here.

He thanked Ian Hopper and Kevin Morgan as local organisers for all their help.

If anyone wants to start a league, or resurect an old league in their area then they should contact John for details. john@sa-mf.com

CHALLENGE MATCHES

No report had been received from Darren but Andy explained that the SAMF v Belgium & Holland had been recently fishing in Holland. Despite bad conditions and difficult fishing the SAMF team had won the event, gaining back our pride after the previous disaster in 2008. It was our turn to host the event in 2010 and Darren was making arrangements to fish at venues in Lymington Hampshire in July.