Wow!
Im feeling a little “casual” now

I am going to have to side with Paul on this one slightly.

Easton Cup was only advertised online AKAIF, I didn’t see any posters at the rink.
I also don’t recall being asked in my prem team if anyone wanted to play Easton Cup, or if our team would like to organise team for Easton Cup.
Also putting a notice in a newsletter that is emailed out, it will probably get skimmed, or not read at all. Whereas a stand alone advert for Easton Cup would more likely grab the attention of those interested

Online is a wonderful thing if everyone uses it, but can make advertising lazy. Its all well and good saying we advertised but if you get a lot of people (6+) claiming not to have heard about it maybe you should question your advertising methods?

Also Easton Cup used to be on at Easter, so most people probably thought since it wasn’t on then, then it was off?

Thats 6 I know of.

I know in ideal world people should be able to just go when is Easton Cup and check website.
But hockey players and technology doesn’t mix a lot, there are the odd geek (you and I included) that spends all day trawling website for info.

But a lot of guys barely know they have an email address let alone check it….I mean I would stop short of ringing everyone in the Club.
But Paul Roth is hardly a marginal member, he has been on various committees and things over the years, and as evidenced by him posting ice hockey stuff and not his shopping list on the forum has a decent grasp of the interweb. If Paul didn’t know, then how is old who-flung who comes for drop in once a week, and thats it meant to know?

I mean Interweb is great and all, but to be honest to me there is no vibe surrounding Easton cup that makes me get excited about its appearance. I am sure I am not alone…..
You need people to be discussing in Changing room etc, to get people excited. At very least put a poster up.

Thunder managers were asked to remind all of Thunder about Easton Cup while you were filling in some paperwork last week. Some Thunder players have managed to find themselves in a couple of teams. All the premier players are signed up in club hub so should have got the newsletter.

It was on beginning of May last year, it hasn’t been run at Easter for a couple of years now. It was originally scheduled for last weekend, but we changed the date a couple of months ago (to avoid duck shooting weekend).

And Paul said he knew of about six players looking for a team to play for. If they’re looking for a team they must by definition have heard about it. Perhaps they heard only recently, but that must be because they didn’t read the email that was sent to them over a week ago. Like I said, if they email Larry Martin, we’ll try and find them a spot.

Who-flungs who come in for drop-in once a week aren’t eligible to play in the Easton Cup as they’re not a fully paid up member of the club.

We used to do posters (or at least the sponsor did). However we’d much rather the sponsor provided something we could use for fundraising rather than investing in posters. Hence we emailed all the other clubs, and all our members.

We actually were going to do a specific email for the Easton Cup, but the club newsletter was due and it’s not actually the club’s intention to spam your mailboxes. Some people will have got three in the past 10 days (1. newsletter, 2. oi, pay your money, and 3. hey, wanna buy a top?). #3 actually was supposed to be part of #1, but we couldn’t get the prices in time and the newsletter needed to go out so that people had warning about Easton Cup before entries were due.

But yes, the club is now largely run online. It’s actually very difficult to be a club member without checking and reading your emails, as all club communication is now managed through the system. People should start to assume if they get an email from the club, it might be worth reading. I could accept the criticism if we hadn’t emailed everyone about it, but we did and people have (presumably) chosen not to pay attention to that email. At some stage seniors need to take responsibility for themselves.

It’s the same attitude that the club is going to take with money. People who owe money to the club have been emailed and asked to pay their debts or make an arrangement with us. If they choose not to do either of those things then unfortunately we’re going to turn them away from the ice for club events after tomorrow. The club has spent too many years pleading with people to pay money or sign up for teams, when the club is putting these things on for their benefit. If people want the benefits of the club the least they could do is look through the membership booklet that we put together, pay the money when asked, and read the emails that we send to them. We can’t grow as a club if we have to hold player’s hands, there’s not enough volunteers to do that.

Having said all that, I welcome anyone else offering to run Easton Cup for next year, we always want more people to front up and take up roles in the club. Larry Martin and I have done it for the past couple of years (with the help of Walter who designs the form), Larry isn’t even in town this weekend, and I’m only here until lunch time on Sunday. Neither of us are getting to play (this year or last), Larry is off getting his NZIHF coaching certification and supporting the Dunedin midgets at tournament, I’m refereeing 9 games to help make sure the tournament happens, and then heading down to Gore to run Southern Peewee trials (ready to go on ice at 5pm Sunday in Gore!).

Robbie did post on slapshot about organising teams: https://slapshot.hellyer.kiwi/general-chatter/easton-cup-2139/

He didn’t get a great response.

Juniors is a problem (one of the entered teams is actually organised by a junior). But it’s a much broader problem than this weekend. The club is trying to create things that can sustain Juniors (it’s part of the point of the premier grade), and the junior managers would have entered a team in the Easton Cup (they did last year), but the numbers just aren’t there. Our registered juniors have more than halved since last year. All the clubs in Southern are trying to deal with this problem but it’s hit us particularly hard this season.

Thunder is creating a development practice space for them, starting tonight at 8pm and the wider problem of Juniors is something that the club continues to work on.

Easton cup actaully vince is traditionally played over the easter period, I would consider myself to be reasonably well “with in the loop” and didnt find out much prior to talking to tom whos organising a team, fair enough to use existing teams that the way its been and it wasnt advertised om the DIHA website until around two weeks ago……..