NEWS: North & Scotland Regional AGM

Received from North & Scotland Regional Chair Mike Hack

The 2021 North & Scotland Regional Cycle Speedway AGM was held online on Monday 22nd November. Seven of the ten Region’s clubs were represented: Astley & Tyldesley, Bury, Fife, Heckmondwike, Hull, Sheffield, Stockport. A minute’s silence was held in memory of Derek Garnett, Craig Hardie and Stuart Howarth, who all sadly passed away this year.

Five of the six Regional officials put themselves forward to continue on the Committee. Emily Morton was elected as Secretary, to replace Julie Higham, as well as continuing as Development Officer. The 2022 Regional Committee consists of: Mike Hack (Chair), Emily Morton (Secretary and Development), Graham Lush (Treasurer), Andy Schofield (Competitions and Referees), Pete Ward (Fixtures and League Recorder).

Niall Morton volunteered to take on the vacant role of the Region’s Facebook page editor. Clubs are asked to submit news articles, match results and reports, photos to Niall on a regular basis. Niall will also be looking at setting up online scoring systems for North & Scotland events, as used by the Polish League and ICSF in their competitions. Kyle Holland stepped down as team manager of the Region’s Junior Battle of Britain team, to be replaced by John Stansfield. Mike Hack and Emily Morton are continuing in their respective roles as Men’s and Women’s Battle of Britain team managers.

The meeting approved a proposal to split Divisions 2 and 3 into two sub-regional sections – Scotland and Northern. The overall Division 2 winners will be determined by a Play-off, between the winners of the two sub sections. There will be no Play-off for Division 3, instead there will be a Scottish winner and a Northern winner. Division 1 will continue to operate as pre-Covid, with teams from the North and Scotland competing in one league. Clubs are asked to let Pete Ward know by 6th
December as to which competitions they will be entering, so that the fixture list can be completed and issued before Christmas. The start of the season is provisionally set at Sunday 13th March 2022. The Regional K.O. Cups were confirmed as being held at Edinburgh, with the Individual Championships to be held at Hull. Fife will be hosting the 2022 Home
Internationals.

Craig Masson reported on the possibility of a new Dundee club entering Scottish competitions in 2022, which was welcomed by all present.