No Dyson - 29 Oct 2008

Not that he will be too happy that I mention him straight off in the post of today but I am surprised he hasn't contacted me for something jejeje!!!! sorry DysonP.

Anyways what GDA things have I been up to today? Lets begin by a phone call I got from NicholasC. who called me to say that the Manchester Club has been given the old Jehovah's Witness venue. Nothing that surprised me as it appears that everyone is getting a venue in Gibraltar except us!!!! Also the Jehovah's have been moved to a new location which according to SueP. (who I spoke with yesterday) is a fantastic venue!!!!!!

A venue is one of, well the only outstanding issue that we have been requesting Government to help us with, as it solves soooooooo many problems!!!!!!!!!! but it appears to be who you know and absolutely nothing else that matters in Gibraltar as no one can argue that as needs go WE NEED A VENUE for the association to grow (and not decline). We are losing the Ladies (with less than a handful) and losing the youth (because of child's play between members but primarily because of a lack of a venue). Luckily the Men's is smaller in number when compared to 20 years ago but is stronger than ever, more disciplined than ever and doing more things than ever. No disrespect intended to any previous committee members who set the way of course!!!!

The youth are the future and a venue where we can be self contained is exactly what we need right now. I have personally had words countless times and in writing with Land Property Services (chairman is a Government Minister) and 2 other Government Ministers including the CEO from the Sports Authority and they know because of the extensive case put to them that its not a load of baloney, but someone up there is making it impossible for the powers at be to finally agree on a suitable venue for us. A venue that we can say is suitable for us, as its us who understand our needs....

Unfortunately I have tried (together with help from the committee too) but our fate is in the Government's hands and if in there reckoning we are not important enough or other sporting associations are seen to be more important than us, then it will never happen.

Every other major sport in Gibraltar has a playing area not just a venue or club, A PLAYING AREA (just thought you should understand the distinction), its like "wash n go" for the majority of them: basketball is "ball n go" to the court, football its "boots n go" to the pitch, tennis its "racket n go" to the court, you get the drift!!!! We can be defined as "set up kitchen n go", "set up bar n go", "collate entries n go", "load equipment into trucks n go" (six times load/unloading), "setup venue n go", "knackered n go".

Those in darts will get the idea of exactly what the above means and if anyone requires clarification then send me a message and I'll elaborate jejejejeje.....

Today too I received from my post yesterday on http://www.darderos.com/ a request from Madrid so I will send the organizer an email sometime tomorrow and give him the conditions for the PDC qualifier if he wants to do it in Spain. I am quite impressed on the response from the website forum as it has been reviewed over 207 times in just one day!!!!

This interest has spurred me on, so I delved into my personal emails were I have contacts from Spain and I managed to add into the GDA Spanish/Catalan emailing group an extra 35 contacts from Spain. I now have over 135 contacts which is more than I ever expected (it will continue to grow of course).

The boring part!!!!!!!!

Also I received comms from Vox who had problems in opening the email of the report for the Kronenbourg 1664 Singles Open played recently so I forwarded the files as attachments this time.

Another person from a new website called http://www.the-rock-of-gibraltar.com/ also contacted me and I will soon get back to them. They wanted to see if someone can become an editor for the section of GDA they have opened on their site, I quickly thought who is the most likely to be lumbered with that? Any guesses??? Come on, have a guess???

Well, its all important as the title of the blog says "for the love of the sport" as all this helps with the exposure of darts on the Rock and it most definitely helps our sponsor's exposure which in turn helps us "Mutual benefit - you scratch my back I scratch yours".

Lastly and personally the most important one, has been, a payment I sent over to Spain to a player that last year won some money in one of our competitions, yes last year I know!!!!!!!!!1 It has been bothering me for ages but finally I got online onto my Spanish bank account and made a transfer to their account.

One of the reasons the payment had not been done earlier was because:

A:- I had been asking the committee to setup a bank account in Spain (I have been asking for over a 1 1/2 years now).
B:- no way was I going to carry out a Western Union or IBAN transfer as the costs are huge and simply not worth it.
C:- Banks in Spain are never open to suite my schedule and I was not going to be the idiot to take off 1/2 days annual leave to open up a GDA account in Spain.
D:- I didn't want to use my personal account to carry out GDA payments.

This brings me to the last comment of today and just to highlight what pure dedication is all about.

You all know about September 10th being a very important day in Gibraltar's history, OUR NATIONAL DAY!!!!!! Well guess who was in Spain at 9:30am setting up a GDA account so that we can accept European payments, have a guess!!!!!

DarrenO. who accompanied me that day (so that we could have 2 signatories) was not a happy chappy but nonetheless he came with me as I had told him it was the only day I could go as on National Day we do not work.

Now thats dedication!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Total time used up for others today 3 hours....