Entrance Lobby & Players’ Bar

The breakfast bar and other new counter-tops have been installed and a new branded entrance mat has arrived and will be fitted any day.  That just leaves us to hang a club painting, which we’ll do as the final ‘icing on the cake’ and add a couple of nice plants.

The intention has been to make the area a much more welcoming and inviting introduction to our clubhouse; distinguishable from the lounge as a functional area, but retaining the open plan flow.  A place for viewing, for sheltering, for meeting, for working, for waiting.

Tennis

With the drop in temperature plus high winds, torrential rain and even snow recently, it’s not really been the weather for tennis.  But, as the saying goes, there’s no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing, and it’s been great to see so many of your wrapping up, resilient and undeterred.

Finals Day for our Handicap Tournament was a tremendous success.  Congratulations to all involved!

Coming up next month we have two home fixtures for our National League team:  Sunday 8th December vs Dukes Wood and Sunday 15th December vs Cumberland.

Last month we reported on the Aylesbury League results and now we can give you the 3 pair Herts League results.
 

Our top performers this summer were our Ladies 1st team run by Jenny Webster.  They won the Premier League so will be moving up into the Championship Division which is the highest one.  This is an incredible result and huge congratulations are due to all the ladies who played for the team.

Also the Ladies 2nd team (run by Joanne Lloyd-Evans) and the Mens 2nd team (run by Dan Jay) both topped their respective divisions 2A and 3B and the Mens 4th team (run by Bobby Mercandino)) came 2nd in Div 5 so these will all be promoted next year, whilst the Mens 3rd team (run by Ian Bragg) are happy in division 4A.  Our Mens 1st team need to get their good players out as they were at the bottom of Div 1B and may end up in the same division as the Mens 2.  An interesting season!

Also our ladies team in Hot Rackets (run by Alice Stoker) came 2nd in Div 3B so will be due a promotion too.

Squash & Racketball

We were pleased to host The Army 1st team training at the club two days last week and playing our 1st team on one of those evenings.

Last weekend a few of our veterans competed in the Tring Masters 3 Counties Tournament, with Ali Coker and Rich Carr triumphing in the O45s and O55s, respectively.

Coming up next month, on Wednesday 11th December we are hosting the South African Knights touring team, containing a number of near-pro level players.  Adam, Grace and Ali (and ex-member Joe Green) will be playing for us.  Put it in your diary and we’ll issue more details soon.

Then, as we go into the New Year, we’ll be planning and scheduling the conversion of courts 3 and 4 to glassbacks - probably to be undertaken in the Summer holiday months when things are quieter.

Social

SkyTV have finally upgraded our old Sky box to SkyQ and have even installed a second box so we can have different channels on our two TVs (although we need to make a tweak to our AV control panel to enable that - coming soon).

Next up in our social calendar, two events coming your way in December:

Friday 6th December - Elvis Christmas Party

Wednesday 11th December - Christmas Quiz Night (details to follow....)

Just One More Thing (aka the Columbo section)

Seagulls on the ITC.

Gulls have been an intermittent problem for some years and, now Summer is over, they seem to have migrated back from the coast to spend their Winter in Berkhamsted once more.

Earlier this year, Dacorum Council removed the refuse bin area on the towpath by the football club, which was the only obvious local source of waste food, but it hasn’t solved the problem.

We installed decoy owls on top of the floodlights on court 6a next to and at the same height as the ITC.  These worked initially but are now not so effective as gulls are unfortunately quite clever.

Ideally, we would jet-wash the ITC roof and then install things such as spikes and netting.  However, as the roof is a canvass membrane, there would be a high risk of damage from jet-washing, and we are unable to pierce it with bird deterrent features.

Potentially, we could hire someone to fly a bird of prey.  But, for that to be an enduring solution, it has to be done regularly and on a continuing basis, which becomes expensive and probably not a good use of your membership payments.  Ultimately, we are dealing with nature.

When we re-roof the ITC - the current roof has a life expectancy until at least 2026 - we will liaise with manufacturers to see what measures we may be able to put in place at that time, balanced alongside cost/spending members’ money.

That’s all for now, until next time.

Club Council

(John Shaw, Phil Trimmer, Michael Beavis, Matt Markwort, Tracey Mackey, Mark Shattock)