From the President - The direction we must take

When I became CAQ President I realised a clear and straight course to improve croquet's future is needed.

Croquet's most urgent need is for more members at all levels. From club players to national champions. More people mean more volunteers to help share the work of maintaining our clubs.

The club days, the competition days and the administration of our game is all due to people giving up their own time to help.

Croquet needs to respect and value out volunteers more, co-operate and get good things done for the game.

This is how we are going to do this.

The four ideals

When we agree to hold these 4 ideals as the basis for our actions and decisions it makes it easy to improve croquet.

Enjoy croquet. Whatever you're doing as a player, volunteer, coach or referee, enjoy it with enthusiasm.

Keep it simple. Outcomes over complexity. Do less admin and play more croquet.

Hit our aims. Purposeful decisions. What positive outcome will this bring? Do things that advance croquet.

Cooperate for croquet. Tolerance is expected. Not all people get along, but well mannered people can cope with that. We are here to enjoy croquet.

I think through things using the 4 ideas and my decisions are clearer. What is good for croquet becomes more obvious.

Club members playing croquet together on the lawn

Club members listening and watching a coach on the lawn

Choosing what to do

CAQ will now run every decision we make through four questions:

1. does it help people enjoy croquet, 2. does it make things simpler, 3. does it hit our aims, 4. are we cooperating?

If the answer is no to any of those, we don't need to do it.

We are never short of good ideas but we are short of resources. So my role is to lead the management committee to choose a few things that matter and have them done.

What CAQ are concentrating on.

Three things have our focus this term.

Improving Communication. First we build a reliable way to reach all 1,500 members, through the news site, the members' newsletter and a new frontpage. It is hard to organise when we can't talk to each other.

Making it easier to run the game. We lift the weight of admin off CAQ helpers and off clubs. We simplify the ways things are done. Volunteers are getting harder to find, so the work itself has to get more simple. People are here to play croquet, not do admin.

Getting new members. We bring new people to club gates through Come and Try and advertising, and help clubs turn them into members. More members means more money, more hands around the club, more people to enjoy croquet with, and a few more future stars to beat New South Wales.

More on the ideals to come

The four ideals are the most important thing I will introduce.

Over the coming weeks I will write more about each of them, and about how these ideals can help croquet organise itself, not just for this year, but for the next hundred years.

A croquet player lining up a shot on the club lawn

Croquet friends together on the lawn with their mallets

In the end

We are all here because we have signed up to a game that is meant to be enjoyed, but managing a membership of 1,500 players across 41 clubs does not happen magically, or easily.

We are all volunteers, and everyone can contribute, even little things count.

Enjoy the game, keep things simple, and, especially, cooperate to make croquet more enjoyable for everyone.