by Alan Gilbert
Rule Change Proposal 1 (pdf) 2 (pdf)
The rules of the Cardiff Athletic Club (CAC) were formulated in the days when all sections looked to Cardiff Arms Park for a venue to pursue their sporting activities. Now of course cricket, hockey and tennis have all migrated away, with only rugby and bowls remaining. To let the future of Cardiff Arms Park be decided by committee members from sections with no interest in the Arms Park is neither sensible nor reasonable. Call to Arms (C2A) would like to see the actual users of the ground given a fair voice more relevant to their numerical advantage in the determination of the ground's future, hence our proposal to increase to eight the number of rugby section committee. These eight rugby section ordinary committee members would then evenly balance the eight ordinary committee members elected by the Bowls, Cricket, Hockey and Tennis sections.
The CAC constitution is worded so that the membership elect committee members from within each section and once the committee members are elected to the Management Committee, the Management Committee can be pretty much as autocratic as they wish.
The whole raison d'etre is to obviate any one section having an undue influence over the others, which is precisely why the number of rugby committee members can only be increased to a max of eight, any more and you risk infringing the ethos behind CAC. The new number of eight merely balances the other sections combined. It cannot form a new block vote that could force through unwanted decisions, but equally the new eight can wield enough power to split a vote so that the Chairman gets a casting vote.
It is custom & practice that a good Chairman always votes for the status quo, unless there are extremely sound reasons for voting otherwise. Of course the chairman is elected by majority vote of the Management Committee.
The Management Committee can only be required to call a general meeting regarding a rule change. Anything else they choose to do is at their discretion. All the power rests with the Management Committee they are empowered to be as autocratic as they wish. The only power that rests with the membership is voting for committee and pushing through rule changes at general meetings.
Should C2A attempt to up the ante by trying to call for a no confidence motion, which by the way we are not empowered to do anyway, the management committee could just sit on everything and take no action.
Because of the loose wording of the rules of CAC, no time scale is stipulated between the receiving of a request for a rule change, and the holding of an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM).
You can see the revised letter here. If you'd like to be one of the 30 members who will submit the written request to hold EGM, please download this form, fill in the necessary details and mail back a scanned image to info@calltoarms.co.uk.
In the event of them calling an election we will also need papers to propose & second 4 committee members using the following procedure.
Please note that members can only use their name once to either propose or to second one prospective committee member only. All rugby section members standing for election to committee - must have been a rugby section CAC member for a minimum of two complete years prior to the date of the election. Eight names are required to nominate four new committee members.
If you would like to propose a nominee for the management committee, you can download a pdf file here. Please complete the form, scan the image and mail it to nominations@calltoarms.org.uk.