The AGM was opened at 10.00am by the chairman, John Amery, who welcomed everyone to the meeting.

APOLOGIES

Apologies had been received from Dick Penny and Rob Neale.

MINUTES OF THE PREVIOUS AGM

The minutes had been circulated previously and were proposed by Dave Read and seconded by Bill Hodgson that they be accepted as a true record.

MATTERS ARISING

Darren Phillips had stated that he would try and set up a website. He reported that this was not quite finished but he hoped it would be operational early 2008.

CHAIRMANS REPORT

John stated that it had been a very disappointing year for SAMF. We have seen a further reduction in membership and therefore reduced funding. We have the lowest ever attendance at the Masters, we have struggled to get teams to fish the Challenge Matches (but at least we continue to be successful in them) and the Individual League has only small pockets of support. Even the team for the World Club championships does not get too many applications. All this is despite the financial support we offer these events. At the moment it appears that only the Daiwa Pairs is attracting good support.

John felt we needed to discuss how we are to utilise our funds.

He thanked all the people who had put efforts into running events for SAMF.

SECRETARIES REPORT

Andy, similar to John, stated that he was very concerned for the state of the Federation, with the lowest numbers of members for many years at 247 and the lowest ever entry for the Masters at 70. It was difficult to pin point any particular reason and we were probably just mirroring what was going on in other branches of fishing and sports in general. This was having a knock on effect with the amount of available funds to be able to run SAMF and this would be discussed under the Treasurers report.

For the Masters one of the overriding complaints from members is the lack of qualifiers in some areas, and we would like to see more people organising these events, and it was pointed out that any member could run a qualifier and run it in conjunction with another event such as an open.

Andy went on to say that he was not convinced that the system of converting length to weight was having the desired effect i.e. getting anglers back on the beach fishing competitions. It was causing numerous problems managing the system from both the organisers side of things as well as the anglers on the beach.

Andy thanked all the members for their support through the year and in particular those people who organise qualifiers, the committee for their efforts and in particular for John for his assistance.

TREASURES REPORT

Copies of the balance sheet had been circulated and studied by the members. The following report was made by the treasurer after declaring a worth of £ 6554.97 in the years accounts.

The above figures show that SAMF’s worth has reduced this year by £ 2128.02. There are a number of reasons for this:-

• These accounts cover a 13 month period and thus have higher than normal costs.e.g.telephones
• Because of the dates selected we had been involved in 4 challenge matches
• Membership is down, reducing income by £ 1314 from last year

Even though this loss looks bad on the face of it, when you take the above factors into consideration it is not quite as bad as it appears. However, we cannot continue to lose money like this and we need to look at reducing expenditure and increasing income.

I am planning to increase the income by sending the December newsletter to every angler on the books, not just existing members, inviting them to rejoin, without the rejoining penalty fee.

We also need to look at our sponsorship and might have to significantly reduce or cancel this, even if only for one year, bearing in mind that we will not have the same number of challenge matches this year.

Personally I would not like to see an increase in subscriptions at this stage.

Various discussions took place on the state of the Federation’s finances. It was generally agreed that we should reduce the amount of funding we give to the teams that represent us. It was also suggested that we need to look at our funding to the Individual League and the Daiwa Pairs.

A suggestion from Dave Read that membership fee of £ 20 had led to people not rejoining and he suggested reduction to £ 10. The chairman pointed out that if this was done we would have to double membership just to stand still, and that was not a likely prospect.

Quite a long debate followed with several suggestions from members on how we should fund SAMF this year:

 There was a proposal from John Bower, seconded by Martin Waters and Dave Read that we should cancel the sponsorship for the Individual League final, at least for this year. The proposal was carried with 19 votes for and 4 against.

It was also proposed and accepted unanimously that we reduce sponsorship for the Challenge matches to 25% for this year.

There were also other suggestions on how we could improve the Masters entry, including making it open to all members or giving new members free entry for the first year. It was decided that these are things that the committee can consider for the future.

ELECTION OF OFFICERS

The following people were elected

John Amery – Chairman

Dick Penny – Vice Chairman

Andy Steele – Secretary

Mary Steele – Treasurer

AREA REPRESENTATIVES

South West Scotland – Jimmy Briggs

North West – Bill Lindfield

North Wales – Shane Russell

Anglia – Ian Bowell

Sussex – Dick Penny

Hants and Challenge Match organiser – Darren Phillips

Kent – Mark Rogers

Essex – Dion MacFayden

South West & Individual League organiser – Eddie Painter, assisted by Hugh Rathbone.

South Wales – Joe Arch

Humberside – Rob Neale

The chairman stated that he intended to write to all the area representatives asking them to take a more active part in getting qualifiers. He pointed out that they did not need to run a separate event for Masters qualifying, but could run in conjunction with local open events. People in the meeting commented on no qualifiers in their area. It was pointed out that as members they could themselves organise the qualifier.

DAIWA PAIRS

Unfortunately Nick Haward had been taken ill as he prepared to leave for the weekend so was not present.

Andy reported that the 2007 event had gone very well and the event continued to attract good support.

2007 winners were Irish pair of E Duff & P Forrester

Dates for 2008 had been set as Saturday 13^th September. Nick would accommodate people on a first come first served basis so early application was recommended.

INDIVIDUAL LEAGUES

Eddie Painter has sent a report stating that the 2007 final had been fished at Orford with the help of Ian Bowell. Mark Pinder had won the 2 day event at what could only be described as a fantastic venue.

There are 4 leagues already running and some spring ones in the pipeline, so he fully expected to achieve the target of 40 finalists.

He suggested that an entry fee should be introduced, £10. The return of the entry fee with completed acceptance form would make his life easier and would raise the prize fund and make the league less dependant on financial support from SAMF.

Eddie made a plea for all members to support the SAMF events and to try and encourage new members.

2008 final will be fished at Eastbourne in October.

NATIONAL SEA LEAGUE

The final of the league had been marred by problems with the results. Two matches had to be fished on one day due to problems caused by a huge tidal surge in the Great Yarmouth area. Cards went missing, many were incorrect which led to organiser Keith Morley cancelling the results till he had time to scrutinise the cards fully.

There were some angry comments from people who felt they had not been treated fairly but Keith stressed that with all the information at his disposal he had made what he felt was the only fair decision.

The meeting agreed that as the NSL has its own AGM it would be better for this matter to be discussed there.

CHALLENGE MATCHES

Darren had sent the following report:

This year has been extremely busy for the SAMF match team, January saw us competing against the Combined Forces at Great Yarmouth for the 2006 title, June was the turn of Belgium and Holland who we hosted at Samphire and Deal. In November we found ourselves fishing the famous Chesil beach in Dorset once again against the Combined Forces.

I am pleased to report that we retained our 100% record and I would like to thank all SAMF members that have given their time to support these prestigious events.

However yet again it has been a struggle to put together a team. I would like to remind membership that the team is open to all, please seriously consider applying for these events after all the costs are subsidised and the bait is always supplied.

The 2008 challenge events will take place in the Autumn. It is planned that dates for both will be confirmed by the hosts in time for the next newsletter. If anyone would like further information regarding these events please do not hesitate to contact me.

John went on to reiterate what Darren has said about the struggle to get the required numbers for the teams and also explained that these events are now highly recognised for those anglers that had a desire to be selected to represent their country.

WORLD CLUB CHAMPIONSHIPS

Report  from team manager John Amery

This year’s championship was fished in Belgium using the same venues as the challenge matches, so we were familiar with the beaches.

SAMF team was:-Mark Pinder, Tony O’Grady, Ian Bowell, Andy Gallacher and new cap Nick Haward.

A total of 19 teams fished and Worthing made up the other English club.

The team had a reasonable day 1 finishing 7^th and backed this up with a 3^rd on day 2 to get into a medal position. Another 7^th on day 3 left us going into the final day in bnronze. However our last day jinx struck again and we had a very poor day and slipped down to a final position of 8^th.

Our congratulations go to the Worthing team, who after 2 days were leading the competition, but went off the boil a little and eventually finished 6^th overall.

2008 championship will be in France, near Bordeaux, late May.

NIGEL ROBINSON OPEN

No event had been run in 2007 but Ian Bowell had informed the secretary that he would put the event on in 2008 in East Anglia, probably within an open event.

MASTERS FINAL 2008

By rotation the match is due in the South East and Dick Penny proposed Eastbourne, which was accepted. Dates will be November 15^th & 16^th.

ALF

John reported that the fund stood at £ 12048, the only income over the year had been a little bit of interest. Questions were asked from the floor as to what the fund was for. John explained that it was set up several years ago to assist with legal costs in defending angling interests. An example would be the involvement of Tony Anderson in the bait digging issue in the North East.

As it appeared to be pretty defunct the meeting asked John to find out what would be involved in closing the account.

PROPOSALS/RULE CHANGES

None had been received

ANY OTHER BUSINESS

Discussion took place on the venues for Masters Finals. John stated that a rotation around the country had been decided many years ago. Areas to host a final were to be:-

North East: North West: South East; South West: Anglia

The North East had been dropped as a venue as it was felt the rivers were not suitable and the north east anglers did not feel that they could fish the match on their beaches.

It was proposed by George Smith that the North East boundary could be extended into Lincolnshire, where he felt a very good match could be held at Skegness. The meeting accepted this proposal unanimously.

The committee were also asked to publish the rotation sequence

Mark Rogers reported that he was back with Ultima and that the company would be happy to print match cards and conversion charts for us. He was thanked by the meeting. He also started a discussion about catch and release and that he thought the lack of numbers entering matches was down to this and that in his area in particular anglers preferred to have a fish kill / weigh in competition. Andy replied that SAMF policy was for catch and release in our events but we would not dictate how clubs or organisers run their own events. 

The meeting closed at 11.40am.