The Twelfth Man 2011

5 Chairman’s Report We move on! This is our Diamond Anniversary, and we celebrate 60 years of glorious achievement... but always we move on to the next challenge, as our predecessors did when they founded the programme of cricket chat with the greatest personalities in the game to keep members warm on cold winter nights... and then the Wombwell coaching scheme... and, yes, this magazine! We move on! This was the mood of the members after what was probably the first Extraordinary General Meeting of the Society, held on 10 May 2011. Those of you who have kept up with the winter meetings – and especially the AGMs – will be familiar with difficulties under which the Society has laboured since New Year 2007, and which have hampered our preparations for the Diamond Jubilee and the years beyond. Treasurer David Musgrave died at Christmas 2006, and when Wombwell memorabilia, books and papers were recovered from his widow’s house a subcommittee comprised of Vice-Chairman Ron Firth, Secretary Mick Pope and Roy Foster – who was to become the Society’s Treasurer – began a long and painstaking study of the financial statements and what in was the banks. Their report was that the bulk of the Society’s balances – a sum totalling £14,119.30 – had not been found. We could not even pay outstanding bills. The ten members of the Committee subscribed ‘loans’ totalling £3,600, and more members joined in with ‘loans’ and donations after my AGM Report of 2007. The total loaned had risen to £5,380 at the time of EGM – and one or two of our members have turned to black humour: “Don’t worry! If I peg out the Society can have it!” being among gems. But it has not been funny. We were told in 2007 that Mrs Musgrave and the family were working feverishly to find missing paperwork – visiting banks and building societies in the quest for an account that perhaps none of us had ever heard of – and the Committee mixed its anguish at the Society’s financial crisis with compassion for a bereaved family. A letter from Dransfield Hodgkinson and Lofthouse, solicitors, acting for Mrs Musgrave, stated on 3 May 2007, that they had been “asked to write to you in order to give our undertaking that upon completion of the sale of the above property (the Musgrave house in Wharfedale Road, Pogmoor) we are to pay the sum of £14,119.30p from the net sale proceeds, unless the monies are located prior to the sale, upon which they will then be paid to the Society.” The word “undertaking” was regarded as crucial, but the correspondence dragged. It was not until 15 March 2010, that we obtained a further answer that seemed to get somewhere. Dransfield Hodgkinson and Lofthouse had now been restyled Pennine Law, and this is what they said: “We understand from Mrs Musgrave’s son that further enquiries are being made as to whether or not his mother would be in a position to make monthly payments towards the reduction of the monies due. We trust that the Society would be willing to accept a monthly payment.” I replied on 10 July that the Committee had agreed that as an interim measure, pending the sale of Mrs Musgrave’s house and reimbursement of the sum of £14,119.30 in accordance with the undertaking, we would accept monthly payments of not less than £100. We asked to be advised on the position regarding the house sale. By this time there were murmurings that Mrs Musgrave was changing her solicitor. This would mean that Pennine Law would no longer be liable for the “undertaking” and that the new solicitors would not be bound to enter into it. The blow fell on 1 November with a letter to Peter Rothwell, the Society’s Honorary Solicitor and a former Treasurer, from Howard and Co., solicitors, Barnsley. Howard and Co. Asserted: “Our client was not responsible for the letter of 3 May 2007, did not instruct Pennine Law to write it and cannot be held to the terms of it. Insofar as our client’s liability for the debt is concerned it is our instruction that she was not liable for it. It was an alleged debt owed by her late husband. Indeed our client believes that the money may well be still held in an account and suggests that further inquiries be made by you in this respect. Mr Musgrave died leaving an insolvent estate, and as a result there are no funds in his estate to meet your claim if proven.” If this was an invitation to ensure that such inquiries were made as public as possible so that if anyone could throw any light on these matters after four years they would come forward... it was an invitation the Society accepted with the calling of the Extraordinary General Meeting and the space this was given by the Barnsley Chronicle , South Yorkshire Times and the Yorkshire Post . Peter Rothwell helped me to write one last letter to Mrs Musgrave and to Howard and Co., and the reply from Howard and Co. was dated 14 March: “Our client’s position in relation to the alleged debt is set out in our letter of the 1 November 2010. Our client really has nothing further to add. Our client regards the matter as closed. Your letter goes on to implicate that our client’s late husband was responsible for the loss. Those allegations are denied and remain unproven. Any publicity implicating our client and/or her late husband in relation to this matter will be treated very seriously, and action will be taken if necessary.” I would stress here that throughout the last four years the Society’s written work has been of the highest standard, and nothing whatever has been written in letters, minutes or reports that could give rise to any action for defamation. It is thanks to the ‘loans’ and the donations over and above the members’ subscriptions that the Society remains in business, but if we had the £14,119.30 we could repay the ‘loans’ and see the Diamond Anniversary as a time to revamp and reinvest in the Society. Top-line cricket-dinner speakers demand four-figure sums, and we simply cannot engage them. More than this, we cannot fulfil our mission to the young cricketers of South Yorkshire as we would wish by taking them on away-days, perhaps to ProCoach at the Yorkshire Cricket School at Headingley, where they could be put through their paces by Yorkshire skipper Andrew Gale and his acolytes. Peter did not advise us at EGM to initiate legal proceedings against an estate presumed to be insolvent, and we are not going to throw further money down the googler, as our Aussie friends call it, by doing so. Nor is this a battle to save a doomed society, but we thank the Yorkshire Press for their sympathetic reporting of our situation – and we certainly thank the gentleman from Abu Dhabi who was first off the mark with a cheque for £500 when he read the reports! We press on with plans to celebrate our Diamond Anniversary during the winter and spring, and provided that the members maintain their devotion we shall be here in the years ahead. Secretary Mick Pope has booked Sir