Also, please take a few posters from your club and put one in your local library, and on your local noticeboard, or in your village hall, or at your local bowls, golf or tennis club and place one in your car. If you use Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, please post messages about the lessons.

We can all play a part to help our hardworking bridge committees boost the numbers in our club sessions. If you find someone who wants to return to bridge or start lessons and you are not sure who to contact, you can always pass their details to me and I will forward their details to the relevant person.

We also have vacancies on the LCBA Committee. If you haven’t taken a turn yet, please volunteer. The LCBA AGM will be taking place on 17th September 2025 at County Bridge Club, St Oswalds Road, at 7 p.m. Please pose your questions/requests in advance of that meeting and please volunteer. Possible Vacancies are: Vice Chair, Chair, General Secretary, Winter League Controller.

Meanwhile the results of the winter league survey indicate that the majority of members prefer the winter league to remain virtually unchanged. We have however simplified the rules somewhat and plan to make further improvements next year. If you haven’t entered a team yet, please join us and Improver/Advanced/Year 2 and Year 3 students are also welcome.

New: We are hoping to enter a Midland Counties 9 high team. Do contact me or Tim Glover ASAP if you are interested. We are hoping to gather some ‘newsy items’ to publish on the LCBA website; Shelagh Rumbelow will co-ordinate this, so please send information to her.

Thanks in anticipation

The local organisers for the Festival of Bridge of September. Our Leicestershire clubs raised significant funds for the "It's a real deal" cancer charity/EBU campaign. Some clubs were able to link it to student recruitment and gained extra students as a result of their campaign. My thanks go to all those who contributed in any way for these events (organising, distributing posters, making cakes etc). There were many of you and it was great to see you joining together to support the initiative. (See the LCBA website for more details).

All the Leicestershire Club Directors; without you running these sessions, the members would not be able to enjoy your club sessions. Taking on these responsibilities eats in to your time and can adversely affect your NGS scores, so thanks to you all for your hard work.

Paul Bowyer for providing training for experienced players and for providing the excellent teaching material that so many of us use.

Our hardworking LCBA Committee who provide events for all of us (and all their background work for this)

We still need more help to keep the improvements going. REQUEST Please volunteer:

• to be the LCBA Vice Chair (we need fresh blood and ideas and helping hands)
• to be an extra Committee member on the LCBA
• to replace John Wilcox as Winter League co-ordinator on the Committee. John served us extremely well; providing years and years of hard work and shared his vast bridge expertise. He is willing to help any prospective replacement....please volunteer and take your turn on the Committee
• Anyone who hasn’t helped yet with local bridge teaching, do consider helping in any way you can to help keep the momentum going of bringing new students to the bridge table to boost out table numbers. You could also help with duplimating boards if you don’t want to be a bridge teacher (helping hands ease the workload)
• County bridge club Committee also need help with duplimating. If you haven’t yet taken a turn, please volunteer (training can be provided)

Bridge holiday

County Bridge club are organising a bridge holiday in March to Makeney Hall in the Peak district. They have a few places left and are now kindly opening it up to all Leicestershire players (whether affiliated or not). Frank Travers is the organiser and more information can be found on the County Bridge Club website. Steve Wright will be the Director and I will be the Host.

Competitions

The LCBA continues to offer a range of competitions (league, pairs league, student competitions, various cups etc) that cater for a wide range of players with non-experienced prizes. In 2025 there will also be 2 Green point events (in March and June) and a Charity Swiss Teams event (in April) (all held at County Bridge club).

County matches

Would you like to represent your County and improve your bridge at the same time? If so please contact Tim Glover and he can explain more.