Any Questions?

QUESTIONS

ANSWERS

Next season's tournament calendar

My club wants to run a tournament over a couple of weekends next year. How do we get the details on the Croquet Victoria tournament calendar?

Clubhouse Hire Insurance

The Kew Croquet Club is reviewing our policy around the hire of the clubhouse and grounds by external groups and members and wanted to clarify some issues around legal liability for such activities.

We have a new lease with the Boroondara Council.  We are permitted to make the premises available for hire by third parties, and one of the clauses refers to public liability cover:

Tenant obtains evidence that the Hirer holds a current public liability insurance policy for the amount of $20 million concerning one single event where applicable

We currently hire the facility, for a fee, to 3 types of groups.

1. Corporates for a work function/activity, which includes playing croquet
2. Private groups for social functions, which may or may not involve playing croquet (the majority do take up the option to try croquet)
3. Members for family functions, which include playing croquet.

With group 1 hirers, I am assuming that the business (hirer) will have Public Liability insurance, therefore will be able to provide evidence to confirm that cover at the time they complete the hire agreement.

With groups 2 & 3 we need to gain a better understanding of what, if any insurance cover is in place for these hires. 

For all hires, which are capped at a maximum of 4 hours, members of the club are present for the duration of the hire for 3 reasons.

1. Open and close the clubhouse.
2. Teach attendees how to play croquet (most hires take up this opportunity)
3. Oversee the site to ensure there is no damage to facilities or equipment – a lot of our equipment is stored in the open area of the clubhouse.

Does the current public liability insurance we have in place for members of the club extend to offer protection to either hire groups 2 or 3?

A further question is in relation to whether our insurance covers members involved club activities away from the club when assisting in fundraising activities like Bunnings Sausage Sizzle.

I tried to carry out further research via the VCA website, which had a link to the 2025 insurer, V-Insurance.  This link referred to 2025 insurance documentation having been sent to the State bodies.  Is that information that will be issued to clubs in the near future?

Any information you could provide in respect of the insurance would be gratefully appreciated and will help our Committee make decisions about the extent of risk we may become liable for if the hires continue.  Hire income is an important income stream for our club and enables us to keep fees at a reasonable level for all members.

We are advised that the Public Liability insurance provided to clubs by Croquet Australia covers all users of the club whether member or non-member. We are unclear as to why the Boroondarah Council would require additional insurance by other users.

We have suggested that Kew Croquet Club send their certificate of insurance and supporting information to Boroondarah Council to clarify if this will be enough for their purposes. 

Watch this space!

A public-facing page with information about the insurance Croquet Australia provides to clubs should be available very soon. A link will be provided here. 

Members Access to Court Time

Does your club use an online booking system to allocate play and practice time for members? If so, please let us know which app you use.

We would like to share your experience with other clubs who are looking for a tool to allow members to book on-court time.

Brunswick uses a lawn booking system provided by croquetbooking.com, which was developed in the UK and is hosted by servers in the Netherlands. It is available free to croquet clubs around the world - it is supported by the donations of users. 

It enables multiple parallel bookings of the same code of croquet (up to 8 players per court) and prevents double banking of two codes on the one court. 

"Recent Member Successes" on the club page is generated from results entered into the VCA tournament system.

 The VCA tournament system records results of events

• organised by VCA and its affiliated clubs and regions, and
• arranged by Croquet Australia or WCF, provided that they are played in Victoria.

It does not record results of tournaments played in other states or countries.

Every individual member has a bio page they can edit where they could publish this information themselves if they wish. 

 (1) Rob Bensley, Howlong Croquet club has been using an Excel spreadsheet for all social days for a few years now.

 I would be happy to try creating something for Pennants, but would need to know just what the requirements are.

 Rod Bensley, Howlong Croquet Club

 (2) Zack from the Merthyr Croquet Club in Queensland was working on this a couple of years ago but didn't take it much past my prototyping stage.   

The vision included a lot more than just a scorekeeping app, but that's actually the nugget where I started the whole project.  I was just starting to get into AC play and really keen to record/track my break play development; a simple recording of the final scores and the times of the matches wasn't scratching my itch. 

There's lots of other fun ideas I had for the app shown in the document there also, but I'll stop for now as your query was just about score recording! 

Do you have answers to these questions?

Some questions for croquet Victoria and the clubs perhaps.

Does anyone have any information on the full results of the 2010 and 2011 ISS events ?

Does anyone have any old information on the Sandringham club pre the fire in the early 1980's ?

Does anyone or any of the clubs have old Victorian yearbooks especially the 1940's through to the 1960's ?

Answers to Martin Clarke -  Croquet Australia Historian

Why aren’t Pennant matches scheduled for weekend play?

By playing pennant matches on the weekend students and working members would be able to participate. This would encourage stronger teams and keener completion between clubs.

Look at the success that sports like Bowls have with their pennant teams playing on the weekends.

 This is a good question. Noting that many other sports eg bowls/tennis run pennants on weekends why, as far as we are aware, are all croquet pennants played during the week.

Would rescheduling an annual pennant encourage club members who work through the week to participate in pennant competition if it was conducted at weekends?

What are your thoughts?  

You can see the 20 responses thus far when the question was posted to the Croquet Victoria Facebook page on 29 May 2023.

Facebook

 Just click on the link above and scroll to 29 May 2023.

Insurance Query  - What does the VCA cover?

I see that our insurance issued by the VCA from Regional Insurance Brokers covers "members, prospective members, temporary members and voluntary workers". What is the definition of a 'temporary member'?  Does this insurance cover 'guests'?  From time to time we have friends and relatives of members such as grandchildren, visiting siblings etc. who come and play with us on an irregular basis.  Are these people covered by this insurance?    

 Also, what about members who we might pay to undertake some maintenance from time to time.  Are they covered by insurance whilst undertaking this paid maintenance?

Jenny Leviston Secretary Ballarat Western Croquet Club Inc.

All visitors (friends, relatives, grandchildren) are covered for public liability. Insurance covers guests. If children in attendance members should have WWCC’s.

If someone is undertaking paid maintenance (ie not voluntary workers) they should have their own ABN and their own insurance. 

Research about temporary members (not a category of membership I have come across in croquet) eg:

Temporary Membership | Archery Australia

It appears that some clubs grant ‘temporary member’ so that whilst that tradie or visitor is on the premises they are covered by public liability. 

Not aware that any of our clubs do this.

Maurice Cevaal-Hewitt Interim Secretary

Advantage Rules? 

Our club is interested in Advantage Croquet. We'd like to know
if other clubs have tried it and how they found it. 

Looking for help on this one.

Does your club play the Advantage Play version of golf croquet? Please let us know if you prefer (or otherwise) this format to ordinary handicap play.

Here are some links to the rules:

https://www.croquet.org.uk/?p=games/golf/advantage

Golf Croquet Advantage Play

Send your feedback to handicapsgc@croquetvic.asn.au

Accessing club survey

I'm responsible for updating the info about our club in the annual Club Survey, but I have no idea how to get into it. What do I need to do?

Start by going to your official club home page. You can find a link to it on https://croquetvic.asn.au/contact.php

Towards the bottom of the club home page is a link to the Manage your club page that looks like this:

If you don't know your club password, and your predecessor isn't able to tell you, ask our Webmaster Gareth Bushill: webmaster@croquetvic.asn.au. 

When you get to Manage your club, you will see a link something like this: 

Club survey - question about visitors

I'm updating the data about my club in the Annual Club Survey. Who should I count when I'm answering the question about visitors to the club? Does it include pennant players? Associate members? School groups?

Croquet Australia grant for recruitment

I've heard that at the end of this year (2023) Croquet Australia is going to pay affiliated clubs $50 per head for increases in their net membership since 1 January 2022. How do I find out what our club membership was on 1 January 2022?

This information has just been added to the Manage Club Membership section of your Manage your club page. 

Note that the grant will be paid on the basis of a net increase in members, not per new member. 

Referee allowances for Lefel Shield (GC regionals)

Do referees at the Golf Croquet Regionals qualify for lunch money and travel / accommodation allowances?

Yes. Claim forms are available on the Resources section of this website - see https://croquetvic.asn.au/links.php. 

Lunch money is available for all three days of the 2023 competition - including the Friday, when play started at 2 pm. 

Referees are being contacted to advise them of this. 

Membership management systems 

From: Philip DeAraugo 

Good morning

I am a member of Bendigo Croquet Club and I was just wondering if Croquet Vic are familiar with any membership management systems that other clubs use and can recommend (or at least we can chat to about their experience).

At our club everything is done manually, but it would be good to get things a bit more organised and I was wondering if you’ve come across a good system.

If you have, please let me know, if not I’ll continue to google it!

Thanks

Phil DeAraugo

From Andrew Wootton (Brunswick)

I've been responsible for installing/running several membership management software packages over the years (not just for croquet). Generally we are looking for a cloud based membership database integrated with a website, email and event management and possibly an online store, with preferably a connection to banking.

Top of the pops would be Wild Apricot which is extremely comprehensive and can handle thousands of members but has gradually become more and more expensive and is now prohibitively so for a small croquet club.

Revsport is an Australian product which is somewhat limited but cheap (approx $100 per year for under 100 members).

You could probably set up something which had most of the required facilities using WordPress for nothing, but would need considerable IT expertise.

Croquet Australia and Aust Croquet Academy have been working towards offering some sort of IT facility which may be comprehensive.  As far as I know the intention is for all the States to transfer to this and that it would also provide a system for individual clubs. I'm not sure how far this has progressed, but as a general principle it is good for everyone to use standardised approaches, so we should all probably hope to move to this eventually.

In the meantime the Revsport approach would suit Bendigo.

From Maurice Cevaal-Hewitt, Interim Secretary

The Victorian clubs' membership is collated on the Croquet Victoria website. We are not aware of our clubs using a separate online platform for their membership database but know that many other sports clubs do.

Here are a few sites used by other sports. Cost may be a factor.

Memberpoint - https://memberpoint.com.au/

Join It - https://joinit.com/categories/sports-clubs

Member Jungle - https://www.memberjungle.com.au/sportingclubs-membership-software

Other thoughts?