Regions

[Furface]

I often find myself wondering what a Region of GNAS is or should be doing. If you asked me average club member, I suspect there would be a bemused shrug. But you lot are not average club members, you are thoughtful, articulate archers. So (no cynicism, please) what does your region do for you, and what should it be doing?

[Little Miss Purple]

After a recent discussion as to who attends shoots such as euronations.. maybe the region should offer advice to those with scores good enough to apply.. and where / how to do it? Maybe this should happen at county level (or already does??).

[bobofdrym]

This thread could open a massive can of worms!!!!
It is a question that you hear all of the time and on the face of it would appear that very little is done.
In GWAS, from a normal club archers point of view, they appear to be an intermediary for collection of subscriptions, they put on a week of tournaments at Dunster and they hold a few council meetings each year.
I cannot comment on other regions, but I do believe that a substantial bank balance is held that could be put to better use on the critical state of coaching and coach training which is currently left up to individuals and individual counties.

[moo-mop]

Herts runs some training sessions for county archers and several competitions; SCAS organises some regional intercounty competitions, authorises the FITA stars in the region, ensures GNAS get our money; England has some money which may be used to support some C/U archers that don't get support nationally, it has another badge scheme in addition to the national ones.
All the organisations are involved with GNAS in supporting the judging and coaching structures, I learn about their work here through this board mostly.
There will be many things that aren't of relevance to a target recurve that I am less aware of.

[Tony_zelah]

Originally Posted by bobofdrym

This thread could open a massive can of worms!!!!
It is a question that you hear all of the time and on the face of it would appear that very little is done.
In GWAS, from a normal club archers point of view, they appear to be an intermediary for collection of subscriptions, they put on a week of tournaments at Dunster and they hold a few council meetings each year.
I cannot comment on other regions, but I do believe that a substantial bank balance is held that could be put to better use on the critical state of coaching and coach training which is currently left up to individuals and individual counties.

you forgot they put on the indoor regional championship as well,

[Thunk]

Personally I see very little added value by the regions; their chief offering seems to be yet another level of beaurocracy whic only adds to the delay getting GNAS cards etc.

I do think that monies from clubs should go direct to GNAS, and that funds due to counties and regions should then flow outward from GNAS. It would improve the service to the average archer no end, and make him/her feel that the system serves the member rather than the other way around.

If regions have a role, it must surely be as a co-ordinating group for their member counties. They may organise regional championships, but I would rather see them creating structures to share resources - coaching for instance. But in essence we have an administrative structure like Gormenghast - layer upon layer built over generations without much, if any, thought as to the overall efficiency. We have a club/county structure; do we really need regions and national levels as well? I'm thinking of EAF here, not GNAS!

Strip down, speed up seems to be the way forward in my opinion.

Just for the record, I am a county chairman.

[not dead yet]

like LMP states regarding euronations etc

In north wales i bet there's only 2 people that know what goes on country wide,etc.

but there's probably only myself that knows the whole caboodle.


except for bangor uni bods,
there's only 2 archers that do the countrywide tournies.
so why waste my time.

interesting thread though

[dell]

I agree that the structure within the UK and especially England needs looking at.
My county is within SCAS, which is SOUTHERN Counties, however, we are as far north as Birmingham!
SCAS contains over half of the archers in England, but gets the same funding from GNAS as all the other regions.
Not sure what the answer is, but at various intervals, the suggestion of bringing the regions in line with Sport England regions has been mooted.

[not dead yet]

dell i think you'll find that the counties don't get any cash from GNAS. that stopped years ago,,, you may get something from sport england.
but all we get from welsh sports is £3000 grant for the whole of wales and that gets used for squad and euronations. thats it


not 1000 archers in north and south wales together. there's about 9500 archers in scas alone

[bkupris]

The SAA region which encompasses all of Scotland is very active. I cannot think of a good reason to change it as to how it fits into the GNAS framework. Of course there are those that would like to see the SAA affiliated directly to FITA but that is a whole different issue...