Mark Guthrie - NSBC President

When you are a kid and you are waiting for Christmas to come along, it feels like defending against a top bridge player on a hand that you are certain is going off. It takes ages, nothing happens, and you are bored out of your mind, but at least you think it will be worth it in the end.

Then whoosh! You’ve waited for eternity for declarer to lead up to dummy’s ♥K so you can make your Ace and Queen to beat the contract, but here you are somehow on lead with only those two cards left.

Some Christmas present.

However, when you get older it feels like playing against Jimmy Wallace from Queensland. No sooner have you taken your cards out of the first board than he is saying “Thanks for the game” and wandering off having thrashed you.

So I guess I’m officially old now, as no sooner were the words “Merry Christmas” out of my mouth before people started wishing me a “Happy New Year”.

Covid definitely made time go a bit spongy for me, there are a couple of years in there that I find hard to differentiate. However, last year was back to full speed. As Douglas Adams (author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, among many other things), used to say to annoy his publisher, “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”

My reference to this quote might be a clue that there are a few things I didn’t get done last year.

On Christmas Eve I was visited by three spirits. Captain Morgan, Johnny Walker, and finally a large polar bear in a Bundaberg tee-shirt. They showed me the errors of my ways and offered me a path to redemption. Unfortunately, when I finally came around on Boxing Day I couldn’t remember any of it, so no major changes of direction for me this year.

This is a traditional time to look back on the last year and to look forwards to the next. You could equally do this every August, but for some reason nobody ever does.

Last year was a good year for the club. Like everyone else we continued to cautiously come out of Covid. Our table numbers are solid with a large number of well attended sessions available to suit almost everyone. We also have two face-to-face venues as well as RealBridge. Our beginners and improvers lessons are as excellent as always, and we managed to attract a couple of big-name guests to do some online lessons for us - Andy Hung and Pete Hollands. Our congresses went well, and our Christmas Parties were a great success. Financially things were a little more challenging and we will end the financial year with a loss, however, we have the reserves to be able to cover this and next year we expect to be around breakeven, although it is too far away to accurately predict.

In difficult times, the staff and volunteers did a fantastic job, and our members seem for the most part to be enjoying themselves (always hard to tell in a game which by its very nature always has winners and losers!).

Last year both Margaret Owen and Kay Moyes stepped down from their quite demanding roles and we look forward to seeing more of them at the bridge table this year as a result. I’d like to thank them again for their years of effort for the club. Of course, others always step up and we got to welcome Fiona Lavery who has been involved with our lessons for some time, into a more formal role.

So, what of this year? What will 2023 hold for us?

In our growth driven, corporate-centric world, it is almost guaranteed that any company, city, state, or country will plan for the next year to be bigger and better than the last. As a not-for-profit organisation we have the luxury of focusing on quality over quantity. Our membership numbers have actually grown quite well through 2022, but that isn’t how we measure success. While we need to keep a solid eye on the finances so that the club can remain viable, our main focus is on being a great place to play bridge. To that end, our hope for 2023 is that it will be much like 2022, just a little bit better.

Of course, that is where you come in. There is no point in any of the work that the staff, volunteers, and committee do, unless you are enjoying yourselves. We obviously won’t be able to implement everything that gets raised, but we do promise to listen, so if you have any suggestions let any of us know, even me if you get stuck.

I know that might not sound overly ambitious as a plan. No mention of fighting the other bridge clubs in Australia to take over their “patch”. No talk of virtual reality headsets for online bridge or hiring a football stadium to cope with the growth in face-to-face numbers. Steady as she goes.

That doesn’t mean we aren’t beavering away, looking to improve things, it just means that you don’t need to be concerned that we will make big changes to how you play the game you love, at the club you love.

So, there you have it. If somebody says to you “I can’t be bothered reading that. What did he say this month?” you have two options.

1. “The usual stuff. This month he had a dream about a polar bear and he’s quoting Douglas Adams, probably never even read the book.” (I haven’t)

2. “The club is losing money. He didn’t do anything last year. Doesn’t seem to have a plan for this year either. Oh, and I think he’s a communist with a drinking problem.” (I am)

Mark Guthrie