A VOTE to re-establish the polo officer position

[SamOC]

Hi all,

So many of you may or may not know that there used to be a position called the polo officer. Someone responsible for the encouragement and development of canoe polo. Probably the third biggest discipline the club competes/actively partakes in after freestyle and whitewater.

In years previous we had a polo officer who dropped off of the committee leaving an empty position and then we were unable to fill it the next year. The club decided to drop the position completely, against myself and the vast majority of older members recommendation. Since we have dropped the polo officer position polo has suffered IMMENSELY, we no longer compete at summer polo competitions when we used to regularly go to multiple summer events (and win). Our varsities training has suffered hugely, we have started seriously training FAR too late in comparison to when we used to have the position in place.

I'm currently 3 years out of college and out of Limerick so I no longer keep up to date with the on goings of the club so I missed the deadline to submit an order of business for the AGM by 3 days. This club operates as a democratic organisation and all I'm asking for is a DEMOCRATIC vote to take place for the position to be reintroduced. I'm not demanding the position be reintroduced I'm asking for a vote to take place. The decision to have this vote does not create a load of hassle for anybody in any way. If we have someone to fill the position this year I believe it should be filled, if we don't have anyone to fill the position it should be dropped that's fair enough with me.

What I don't want to see is the club and discipline I and so many other oldies love slowly deteriorate because the current committee don't like polo.

So I would ask to please comment below and ask for vote for the polo officer to be reintroduced. Feel free to leave your thoughts below. All I'm asking is for the opportunity for the club to have a democratic decision, I know this is 3 days late but it would be of MASSIVE benefit to the clubs competitiveness across all disciplines.

[kaitlynlee]

I’m happy to have a vote


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[ToirealachMurnion]

I personally don't think we really should be voting on this so soon, as I know it has been 2 years since this was voted in, but of those 2 years, the club was pretty much closed or severely limited in what it could do due to the pandemic for about one and a half of those years.

I think we need to give the new system of having the discipline officer and the polo officer position merged more time before we can actually make an informed decision on it. I don't think it is fair to revoke a decision that we made before we really gave it a chance. I would 100% be up for voting on this next year as I believe then we would have a better picture as to what affect this has on the club.

TL;DR: I don't think we should vote so soon after we made the decision, especially considering we lost a lot of time to the pandemic. These are just my opinions, I just wanted to share my view.

[Darraghlehane98]

Hi Lads,

During the 2020 AGM a motion was passed that an ordinary committe member should be brought into the committe to relace the polo officer. The polo officer was them imalgimated with disciplines. I have attacehd bellow screenshots of the agenda item for the 2022 AGM. At the time it had been a year and a half since the polo officer had been filled. A discussion was opened on the forum viewtopic.php?f=79&t=20465 to open it out to all the members of the club to their opinion on the structure of the committe. From there the committee at the time took the information that they recieved and did their best to come up with a solution for the future. I would be very happy to hear peoples thoughts on their thoughts on the committe structure here bellow.

With regards to the drop in polo the club did not have the opertunity to compete in any summer competitions due to the club being shut down for a year and a half. The club did not get access to any of the club gear and werent allowed to partake in club activity until the beginning of August where at the time the club were opperating under extremely strict conditions from UL Student Life.

The reason that the polo team training has started this year is because un like normal years we were 4 weeks later being allowed in the pool where we had 2 years worth of freshers, half the pool capacity compared to pre covid times and not to mention 1/2 the leaders The committee worked their fecking ass off for the year with new rules being thrown at us left right and centre. It wasnt an option to stop teaching the freshers in the pool as they are the future of the club. Before covid we would have only have had 3-4 weeks of polo training before the christmas break.

Saying that the current committee doesn't like polo is a completely outrageous allegation. There is a possibility that 5 out of the 10 members on the intervarsities polo team will be committee members. With the club being shut down for a year and a half the committe thought the best way forward was to develop the younger paddlers and get the standard up and try get it back to where it used to be. If someone hasnt learned the basic boat control skills and cant paddle their boat straight then they certainly cant play polo.

For the reason that I have stated above I dont think not having a polo offier is to blame.

Thats just my tupence worth!!

[RobCampbell]

Echoing the points previously made, while I agree polo has suffered this year, it is due to the circumstances we find ourselves in rather than a committee decision to go against polo. Since we had the AGM where we imaglgamated the polo officer and disciplines officer, we have been pretty much in lockdowns since then until September. So we have not been able to have a full year of proper club activities with the current committee structure.

As mentioned we were not allowed access to club gear and getting the club running again until late august. As such we were physically unable to partake in any summer competitions since the roles got reimagined. And yes I e didn’t start polo training until late this year compared to normal years but again this was due to having two lots of freshers this year, both coming in at different times which resulted in us having to stay coaching the freshers longer into last semester compared to usual.

I personally would like to see what the current structure looks like in a normal year without the multitude of restrictions and shit the current committee had to go through to get the club back to where it is today.

[Stella McEligott]

Hey guys,

I don’t think voting out the new system, that being having a disciplines officer and an OCM rather than a separate disciplines officer and polo officer, would be wise so soon.

I think that having the role of Disciplines and an OCM has serious potential to better the running of the club, it just hasn’t been given a chance to do so yet. There was good reason the solo role of Polo officer was dropped (this is outlined by Darragh above so I won’t repeat it)


With regards to Sams comment about this year’s committee, the current committee had to rebuild the club this year.
We did our best to get polo up and running and have done so successfully. Training did not begin as early as normal as we would have liked as we were without the pool for a while and had a serious number of newcomers to train.

*We did not compete in Summer polo competitions as we have been in a pandemic since the position of polo officer was dropped. It was not permissible to do so by UL standards. *

Speaking about these past few years as tho we were in the same position as past committees is ridiculous.


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[ThomasNash]

Is there anything that can be said for having both a polo officer and an OCM because having the OCM has proved helpful and polo is a very important discipline (necessary to winning varsities).

I think if there is someone willing to fill the position as a polo officer we should have it.

[ThomasNash]

An idea that had been thrown around at the time was that the position would be a polo officer position and if no one was willing to fill that position then if should revert to an OCM and the position be filled as that.

I feel that if this is a possible outcome then it would be the best solution and avoids having someone elected to the committee in a position they are not 100% happy with

[EoinMorgan]

There have been plenty of points made on both sides of the argument above so I'm not going to repeat them, but do want to emphasize what Nash said about having the OCM role be a Polo Officer first, and if it is not filled to revert to a regular OCM.
There was a lot of debate about this last time we were adjusting the constitution to amalgamate the Disciplines and Polo roles, as the reason Polo was removed and OCM was added was that in the event that a Polo officer was not elected (as occurred in 2019) we would be in breach of our constitution.
I think it is definitely a better system to keep the current constitution, regardless of the outcome of the vote on whether we should have a polo officer, and keep the OCM role, as if we run in to the same situation again where a constitutionally-delegated Polo officer has not been elected, we will need to amend the constitution again, which requires another AGM/EGM, or else be in breach of the constitution for the year. With an OCM role, it is up to the committee of a given year to define the roles and responsibilities for the OCM, so this allows for an OCM to be elected as Polo officer if there is someone available, or for it to fall back to a regular OCM role and Disciplines to take on the responsibilities, without having to mess around with the constitution every second year.
With that in mind, I think that this vote should be on whether the Disciplines/Polo responsibilities should be split and Polo duties be assigned to the OCM, rather than to add the Polo Officer role back into the constitution formally. We can still run elections as if the role is Polo Officer and not an OCM role (CompSoc has been delegating some roles like this for years), and in the event there is no one willing to go for polo on the night of the AGM, to then open it for election as an OCM role, so the same end result with a lot more breathing room from the constitutional perspective.

Speaking personally, I went for Disciplines in 2019 as no one nominated themselves and otherwise the role wouldn't have been filled. Following me accepting the nomination, the Polo role then went unfilled and those duties fell back to me. I'll admit I didn't do a great job with it. I had no interest in it or passion for it, and tried to organize training and events by asking people who had more interest than me in it to help out, which worked to a point, but it definitely wasn't a patch on what previous polo officers had done with the role. The following year the club voted to amalgamate the roles formally, which, as others have pointed out above, has not had the chance to be proven in practice due to the pandemic. I've also left college since and not had any involvement with the committee, so I have no idea how efficiently that has worked out. What I will say, is that if I had known that my role would be Disciplines and Polo, rather than the traditional Disciplines role, I wouldn't have accepted the nomination. I knew from the start that wouldn't work out, but it was too late then. Whatever the result of the vote and possible amendments to the constitution, I think one thing that is clear from the replies here is that most people are in agreement that if no one is interested in taking on the Polo role, then it shouldn't be forced on someone, but it's worth remembering this applies equally to the Disciplines role too. So what I would ask, is that to avoid someone ending up in the same position as I did, that the election of the Polo officer/OCM be done before the Disciplines role, so that at least the person taking on the role will be informed beforehand whether they are volunteering for just Disciplines or Disciplines and Polo. It's a small change to the running order that doesn't require any constitution changes or extra effort, but it could avoid a situation where someone is stuck with duties they didn't sign up for.

Anyway, that's enough typing for one post, if anyone needs any more opinions from me I'm great at pulling them out of my arse

[SamOC]

I would just like to say that the committee has done a fantastic job getting the club kick started again, Fresher retention has been great and the younger paddlers seem very enthusiastic and interested in all of the events that have been organized so far. Its great to have peoples input here as I feel the forum is very rarely used at the moment.

I'm going to address each point raised so far.

(1) The Covid Situation.
The club has been inactive for a year and half due to Government and University guidelines which no doubt has restricted what we can do during that period, A fair and valid point.

(2) We need to give more time before we can judge
I would disagree, If we have someone to fill the position we should run it. The only reason we got rid of the position was because there was no-one to fill it.

(3) The 2020 AGM
The Club voted to remove the position as we had not had a Polo Officer for a year and half, this decision was made even though we had a first year (Mr John O'Boyle) who said he would be interested in running for the position. I have no doubt he would have made a great Polo Officer seeing as he made it to pretty much every single polo session I had organized. Surely if we have someone to run for the position we should run it? I have no quarrels with having an OCM in place if there is no-one to run for the position.

(4) The Capacity of the Pool
We have goals outback that could easily be used for polo. (I assume more people were allowed outback than in the pool) You also do not necessarily need polo goals to train polo. We used to play possession instead of actual polo when the swimmers had half of the pool.

(5)The Committee not liking Polo
This was probably wrong for me to say, I believe that some people on the committee do not value polo as much as they should. Polo is honestly one of the best ways to build paddling fitness and basic boat skills. How often do you have people flat out sprinting, flipping over unexpectedly or maneuvering your kayak to avoid collisions? Almost never, until you need to on a river. I would honestly say having freshers play polo would teach them more than sitting in the pool getting instruction (to a certain degree). How often are first years given structured lessons in the pool? I know in previous years it definitely drops off after a certain point in time. (Im not around much so I honestly dont know)

The Role of the Disciplines Officer
Thank you for highlighting this Darragh, I have attached the minutes from September onwards where the disciplines officer had a responsibility

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I have also attached screenshot of the National Kayak Event Thread Which has not been updated recently despite there being Multiple different discipline events being ran while the club was open.

In addition to this I have attached the Kayaking thread of the forum where no post has been made about ANY events other than the odd Freestyle/ Whitewater trip.

It appears through the amalgamation of the Polo Officer and the Disciplines Officer we have lost both. I'm not trying to have a jab at just the disciplines officer here, I'm simply pointing out what I can see on the Forum. This job should also be encompassed by the STD and Ass STD. It is also the responsibility of the entire committee to ensure everyone is doing their job.

I would nearly argue that disciplines doesn't even need to advertise WW or Freestyle, the club already naturally goes to these events without the need for promotion. Its Slalom, Marathon, Surf and Wildwater that needs to be pushed as a disciplines officer.

I completely agree with Nash that both have their own benefits. The Polo Officer position if done right can have far more responsibilities than most of the smaller committee positions.


Its great to have people talking about this. Again all I'm asking for is for the vote to take place, (which it is) . What harm in the club having a democratic vote? There is nothing to lose here it will only benefit the club.

[Stella McEligott]

I do understand how this could look terrible on my part for anyone who has not been around this year.

This year I had have a lot of other responsibilities in the club that were not related to disciplines.
And I understand that would make the role of disciplines officer seen useless.
However this year it was a lot more team work towards getting the club up and running, rather than people sticking to their set role.

That was the unfortunate reality of this year. I have left some potential plans for future club trips in the google drive and am still working in more to upload for the next disciplines officer to use.

Although this year I did not get to focus on the position properly, I feel that is purely because of the year that was in it and that this position has a lot of potential to be good for the club.

I am really disappointed that a past committee member, looking at the year we’ve had and amount of work our committee did, would fail to see the reasoning behind my lack of specific ‘disciplines’ work.


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[Stella McEligott]

^ Excuse my rubbish english I just proof read that ahahaha


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[ToirealachMurnion]

Just on the point made about the role of the disciplines officer

In my experience from being on the committee the last year, it was really strange as we had to constantly adapt to new circumstances as a result of the ever changing guidelines and restrictions regarding the pandemic. I don't think it's fair to judge the disciplines officers performance this year due to the extreme circumstances, as Sam mentioned, we made a great effort at getting new club members and having good fresher retention. We did this, coming from a situation where we had lost a lot of experience in the club and everyone on the committee had to work harder to get the club not only started, but also to get things running as smoothly as we could again.

With that said, some things may not have recieved the same amount of focus as in pre-pandemic times, as Stella said, the disciplines officer had to carry out many other jobs that wouldn't normally fall under their jurisdiction due to the fact that we had to do a lot more 'odd jobs' to get things going as they had been before the pandemic. I would like to see the current arragement of having an OCM instead of a Polo Officer run for at least one full year before we decide to change it. Next year, hopefully the Covid situation will be better than it was last year and the club can improve on the foundations the current committee set as they won't have to deal with some of the issues the current committee had due to the pandemic.

As a member of the committee for the year of 2021, I really want to stress how difficult it felt sometimes to get things done due to all the setbacks the club faced in the last two years. It wasn't anyones fault of course just the nature of the pandemic. For me personally, I think the committtee worked really hard to get to where the club is now, and looking back now and saying we should have done more to promote polo and other disciplines is unfair. I believe that we will be able to get back into those disciplines, including polo, to a greater degree next year, but I believe that this is possible with just the disciplines officer.

The only reason I'm against the idea of having a vote is that I don't believe we will be giving the current situation enough time to see its effects. In the 2020 AGM the club voted on this subject, and I think it's only fair and democratic to respect that vote and at least give it more than one semester of being in effect before we have the possibility of it being revoked. I think we should postpone this vote to next year. But that is just my opinion, I just want to make sure people see the big picture before deciding to vote. Thanks to everyone who contributed to this topic .

[StephenODea]

I agree with Sam’s request.. why not try to fill the position of Polo Officer first, versus always defaulting to an OCM. I don't see any benefit in having an OCM when there are 13 other people already sharing the ordinary/routine tasks.

Roles:
When on the committee I have been both the Polo officer and also the Disciplines officer. I believe that there is actually more work to be done as a Polo officer than Disciplines.

Make polo more appealing, not axe it.
Add Assistant Secretary to the title/role or something? I believe it was a wrong decision to remove it in the first place and I haven't seen anything to change my mind.
You don't have to be the most skilled or love Polo. Just make sure that people have the opportunity to take part.

Varsities:
If ye really want to win, Polo needs to be trained to a high standard.

There was a reason we had a Polo officer for all those years and it has suffered recently.
The busiest time and one of the main roles of the Polo officer is in Semester 2, ensuring Varsities training was taking place.

Learning:
IMO Polo is great for teaching boat control, fitness, rolling under pressure, team building and its actual organised training in the pool (Versus floating around chatting) etc.

Covid:
Its been very shitty and ye have done loads of background work. But still there has been little promotion of niche disciplines or Polo since August.

Also excuse my shite grammar, I did science