Intro

Welcome to the Christmas Newsletter 2006 to all our members. The aim of this term as well as all this year was to promote our club throughout the service and to improve our membership. This year was our turn to be host service for all inter service matches, this has been difficult to achieve due to my units operational programme. With the assistance of Dave Webber, Cliff Newbold, Scotty Mac and Nathan Lankaster, we have managed to pull this off, thanks to you all for the team effort.

Failures

What I have failed to do this year is to renew our membership to the NFSA, and reward those who competed on the International circuit. I apologise for this and I intend to remedy this as a priority in the New Year, this has been partly to blame for the lack of available finances and the clubs treasurer retiring.

Web Site

The Web Site is still our greatest asset for information exchange and I would like this to be used more widely by our members. If you have any ideas for improving this please let me know. I know that having a closed forum for private information for members only has been suggested, but to be truthful, we are only a sea angling club and not Naval Intelligence. Please forward all information for the web page through the sea secretary's email address.

Recruitment

Where did all those WAFU, s come from. Welcome Club Heron and the lads from 45 Commando.

Competitions

I will not run through an event by event of the matches so far as these are displayed on the web, I will give a quick appraisal of the ones this term.

The five Service Match at Portsmouth was a success and thanks again to Cliff for organising it. The Army were unable to field a team so at short notice so ISAC stood in. Cliff as expected on his home turf ran out as individual winner with the Police as team winners on 23 points and our team second with 20 points.

Combined Service Boat

As the hosts to this years' competition, the RNRMAA opted to head for Weymouth in an attempt to regain the Bob Jackson Memorial Shield, which had been banged-up in a Police Nick for the last 12 months. Competed for by teams of 16, the Services formed theirs with RN providing 6 (Ian Gibbs, Jamie Howard, Jimmy James, Jim Lamb, Steve Redding and Dave Webber) and 5 from both the Army and RAF. With Jamie and Jimmy making their debuts at this level, the team was blessed with strong experience and youthful potential. With some top anglers representing the Police, it was anybodies guess who would win.

Normally in Combined Services events anglers form mixed teams on each boat. However, for this event it was decided to keep the majority of single Services teams together which might not do much for inter-Service bonding but with improved communication and advantages in both personal and team motivation, hopefully would be sufficient to outweigh a joint team image. Therefore the RN fished onboard Flamer, the Army on Pegasus and the RAF on Bonwey.

Inter service shore

The full story for this match was written by Nathan (Lanky) Lankaster and can be found in the report section. To beat the Army team who to be honest have proved pretty bloody invincible on the beach has got to be the best win for us in the Inter services for a while, in fact I think the last time we won this match was 11 years ago. Obviously with me not being there for the first time in years provided information on where the weak link is. Well done lads.

RNRMAA Clothing

For those that do not know, I have a selection of RNRMAA clothing, ball caps, polo shirts, and smocks at the cheapest prices you can ever get. For instance a fully embroided smock for only £15. Contact me for sizes and any information.

Membership Fees

All membership fees are to be paid in January. Gents, by paying your membership fee in January determines what percentage of monies is divided up between the different sections. (Sea - Course - Game).

That is it for the matches this year; the first one in 2007 is the combined services shore. Again it has been a long time since we have won this trophy so with a combined service effort maybe this time the trophy could be ours. Lanky is running with our part of the team and I expect Jim Carghill of the Army will be the overall organiser.

Next year the RAF are our hosts, I believe that the Boat match is being held in Plymouth again. With all our team available and some new young anglers in the squad, could a double possibly be on the cards....surely not.

If you are interested in competing in any of the 2007 matches please contact me soonest. I will send the usual signal to all units.

Christmas and a Happy New Year

Yours in Sport

Tom Worthy