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%	Chief Range Officer's AGM Report
%	Academic Year 2000/2001
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%	Mark Dennehy
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\author{Mark Dennehy\\Chief Range Officer\\[5mm]
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\title{\Huge \sf \textbf{Dublin University Rifle Club\\
Secretary's Report}}

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\section{The last four years}

I'm leaving the committee this year after three and a half
years serving on it, mainly because I believe noone should
stay on a committee too long. Looking back on the last few
years, I'm quite pleased with what the committees from the
last few years have accomplished. We've taken the club from
the 1995-6 slump where we had about thirty people actually
shooting to the current high of 436 members, nearly a hundred
active, the ladders full of cards and the colours team about
to stomp all over UCD. Our financial situation isn't rich,
but it's a great deal better than when we found it. The
standard of shooting in the club has risen enormously, mainly
thanks to Steven and John, and our good name is now well
established. 

I mention these achievements for the incoming committee --
when we started, we set ourselves the goals of bringing the
membership back up, increasing our attendance at
competitions, fixing the financial problems the club had and
getting our members more active in the club again. We had
been in the club during the pre-95 period and so had a good
idea of what we were aiming at. The incoming commitee should
pick goals for themselves to accomplish and let these decide
what they do - it worked wonders for the current committee,
and it's really the best way to tackle the job of running the
club.

\section{New Air Rifle Classification Scheme}

NTSA Air Rifle coordinator Geoff Cooney proposed a new
classification system for Irish shooters this year.
Discussions took place between him, us and UCD. The new
system would see the introduction of sub-classes to the
current classes and a general all-round renaming policy. To
promote the sense of advancement through the ranks, it was
thought that each of the four current classes would be split
into three sub-classes. You could move from sub-class to
sub-class in internal club events, but only from class to
class in external events. We would use our ladder to decide
which sub-class a shooter was in. The idea did mean a bit
more work for stats people, and there was the spectre of
needing forty-odd prizes (3 places $\times$ 3 sub-classes
$\times$ 4 classes plus prizes for Junior and Ladies
classes). In practise, this wouldn't happen except in really
rich clubs , with prizes begin given out for the four
classes only. The sceme also involved expanding the Junior
category to includ age brackets (u14, u16, u18) with
different courses of fire for each (20 shots for u14, 30 for
u16 and 40 for u18), to prevent spinal problems in the very
young juniors, a serious problem as I, or Ray, or Steven, or
any other old person can testify to!

The scores for the classes were set as follows:
\begin{center}
\small \sf
\begin{tabular}{cccccccccccc}
\toprule
\multicolumn{12}{c}{Adult Male}\\
\multicolumn{3}{c}{Novice}&\multicolumn{3}{c}{Intermediate}&\multicolumn{3}{c}{Senior}&\multicolumn{3}{c}{Master}\\
Grade 3&Grade 2&Grade 1&Grade 3&Grade 2&Grade 1&Grade 3&Grade
2&Grade 1&Grade 3&Grade 2&Grade 1\\
\midrule
60*5&60*5.5&60*6&60*6.5&60*7&60*7.5&60*8&60*8.5&60*9&60*9.5&60*9.6&60*9.8\\
\midrule
300&330&360&390&420&450&480&510&540&570&576&588\\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\end{center}

\begin{center}
\small \sf
\begin{tabular}{cccccccccccc}
\toprule
\multicolumn{12}{c}{Adult Female}\\
\multicolumn{3}{c}{Novice}&\multicolumn{3}{c}{Intermediate}&\multicolumn{3}{c}{Senior}&\multicolumn{3}{c}{Master}\\
Grade 3&Grade 2&Grade 1&Grade 3&Grade 2&Grade 1&Grade 3&Grade
2&Grade 1&Grade 3&Grade 2&Grade 1\\
\midrule
40*5&40*5.5&40*6&40*6.5&40*7&40*7.5&40*8&40*8.5&40*9&40*9.5&40*9.6&40*9.8\\
\midrule
200&220&240&260&280&300&320&&360&380&384&392\\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\end{center}

Note that the ladies now shoot a 40-shot match, according to
international standards. This has not been the case in
Ireland up to now, as there were never enough women shooters
to justify it. However, the change should be made as our
international performances show a deleterious effect on Irish
shooters' results because they have to adapt to a shorter
match. 

The system was not used this year - it is due to be phased in
over the summer and to be in full swing by next October. The
four Air Rifle competitions this summer are designed to
break-in and debug the system, where it will be run in
parallel to the old 4-class system.

\section{Archival of Club Documents}

The ``Markive'' of old club documents on the range was put
together at the end of last summer. I found a lot of
interesting stuff in these documents - the original minutes
book for the commitee, and the old Match Secretary records
and so forth. However, the records are physically
deteriorating due to the environment. The old library has
agreed to archive the material for us -- the next secretary
should arrange to transfer the material to them, as they're
eager to have it and we have been assured that our records
will remain confidential. 

\section{Freedom of Information Act}

This year saw the FOI act brought into force in college. So
far we have had no requests under it, but our records are now
better kept, so we could if necessary respond to one.

\section{NTSA AGM}

The NTSA AGM took place on April 6 this year. This is
important to us as the NTSA makes decisions as to the sport
in the country as a whole - like the new Air classification
system for example. They also organise the National
Championships, National Squad, training and coaching weekends
and decide who can represent Ireland abroad. This year we
have myself on committee again as PRO. Complaints were put
forward by DURC via John Keeney this year regarding the
smallbore classification system which has 50m shooters being
classified with 25yd scores, and with the NTSA Calendar where
our competitions were shoved around to make room for the
national squad training weekends. We've also just issued a
complaint as the NTSA scheduled a shoot on the same day as
our Intervarsity match, which is prejudicial towards our
shooters. Nothing on this has yet been resolved however.

\section{Alumni Lists}

The Alumni office has suggested that we submit details of all
DURC shooters/ROs/Committee members who leave college each
year to facilitate reunions and so forth. Having seen
first-hand how hard it is to find ex-shooters once they leave
college (though we're currently seeing a reemergence of some
of our more prominent ex-shooters like Conor Tighe and Simon
Kennedy), I believe it's an excellent idea. There are some
practical questions related to figuring out who is leaving,
whether they want to stay in touch, and general paperwork
work, but on the whole, this is worth the effort.

\section{Government Grant woes}

We tried applying for a government Department of Sport grant
this year for capital equipment. Sadly, we were turned down
on the basis that we were the Department of Education's
responsibility - of course they say we're the Dept.of Sport's
baliwick...

The next committee should lobby to get into the scheme for
next year. 76 million euro was given out this year - we
should be trying to get some of that as if we had, we could
have bought two rifles this year instead of one!

\section{Club Sponsorship}

Efforts to get sponsorship for the club this year proved to
be a mixed bag. Government grants were ruled out as I
outlined above, but private and corporate sponsorship was
also sought. Eircom turned us down, as did Bank of Ireland,
AIB, Eircell, Esat, and Meteor. We also appealed to target
shooting equipment companies, asking for sponsorship of
events instead of the club, and here we had more luck, with
Hamerelli giving us a box of caps for the DURC 10m Open and
Shilen giving us a voucher for a barrel for the 50m Open.
Simon Kennedy also donated privatly to the prize fund for the
10m Open, and now has a shield in his name. 

Next year's committee has to start looking for sponsorship
much earlier - as in right after exam time. Eircom and the
others decide at the start of the year who they'll sponsor -
we need to hit them with a list of our achievements in the
last year, articles in the press about us, our long safety
record and so forth, and we need to be quite proactive about
it - until you talk to them, and not just write, you can't
write them off.

\section{Management Problems}

This is our biggest problem in DURC. We're a volunteer
organisation. We're also the biggest club in college,
catering to 436 members and doing so with minimal resources
in a very demanding sport. This means that the committee are
being swamped in day-to-day running of the club and have
little time left for projects either major or minor. Most of
us have academic responsibilies, exams, courses to teach,
PhD's to write or jobs to hold down as well as train; and
that's before we do our DURC committee work. There's a long
history in DURC of committee members failing courses and
leaving college or repeating due to their workload in
committee demanding too much of them. A new scheme is needed.

Basically, the problem is that we currently manage the club
on a ``line'' management philosophy - ie. day-to-day running
of a continous process. We have no facility for individual
projects, such as introducing 3P Air Rifle, or construction
of things for the range. In the past, non-committee people
like Keith have done all the DIY. Well appreciated, and the
club thanks Keith for this, but the club needs a mechanism to
be able to do things like this themselves. We need, in short,
a pool of people who are not on committee to do specific
projects - time-limited, single-task jobs, like ``build the
target holders for 3P air rifle''. I urge the incoming
committee to develop such a pool and to codify it and
write down somewhere how they want it to work. 

Otherwise, the incoming committee will get as stressed with
workload as this year's outgoing committee have gotten.


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