PRESIDENT’S REPORT

I, once again, have great pleasure in presenting this report with a great sense of achievement and pride. We have, as usual, had a very productive and successful twelve months. There have been many highs during the year but some lows as it is the end of an era for Badminton Oceania with the passing of our inaugural President Heather Robson. Heather was an inspiration to us all, a dedicated and determined advocate for not only badminton but women’s involvement in sport and life. She was a great mentor for many and will be sadly missed. The year has not been without challenges but in the usual professional, can do approach of our team, we have succeeded. We continue to grow and develop in all areas. We have had structural changes, staffing increase, and ongoing development within our members. Julie has demonstrated her leadership, addressing all challenges and, with great support from our dedicated staff, I believe we have been both productive and proactive throughout the organisation. On the world scene we are respected and appreciated, despite our small numbers. Para badminton has again been an area of focus as we work towards the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. Ian Bridge, based in Melbourne, was appointed in a part time role to facilitate our development. Ian has been working tirelessly to expand our para network of players and coaches. It is very pleasing that BWF have confirmed we will have technical officials at both the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games. The players have yet to be decided but we are certainly looking forward to representation at both events. The 2019 calendar year began with the Oceania Team Championships, hosted by Badminton Australia member Badminton Victoria, at Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre in February. This well run and successful event set the tone for the year with a series of firsts. This included both the Open and Junior team events which added to the atmosphere. We were very excited to have teams from Cook Islands and Samoa playing in these Championships for the first time, an excellent result from our ongoing development programme. The Oceania AGM this year was conducted alongside the BWF AGM and forum held in Nanning, China. It was very pleasing to have 10 of our Member Countries attend our AGM, a very warm welcome to Solomon Islands who were confirmed as a BWF member early 2019. I was very honoured to be re-elected unopposed as the BWF Vice President – Oceania, for the next 4 years. BWF continues to encourage members to attend by providing a travel and accommodation subsidy which enables most of our members to attend giving us the PRESIDENT’S REPORT opportunity to have valuable face to face discussions. The BWF forum format this year was slightly different, with members allocated to small groups with similar challenges to enable discussions which were relevant to them. It was an excellent opportunity for networking and enabled our members to interact and relate to other countries with similar demographics. The timing of these events also enabled members to attend the Sudirman Cup which was held at the same time. This is an invaluable experience for all to see world class badminton. Our Executive Board met three times in person and twice by conference call during the year which ensured the Executive Board was kept fully informed and up to date with what was happening across the organisation. Early in the year we completed a review of our policies; which are becoming ever important to keep relevant and current. This year our members hosted several tournaments, of various levels, and I was pleased to be able to attend several them which provided good networking opportunities. Australia and New Zealand were the major contributors in this area, and we were able to raise the level of the Grade 3 tournaments with the efforts of our Communications Manager; Tom Leonard with improved live streaming and increased social media coverage. The major focus for our Pacific Island members was the Pacific Games in Samoa. Our staff worked hard on this event along with the local organisers to stage an extremely successful event; I hope the legacy from such a major event will be ongoing with future events hosted in Samoa. The Australian and New Zealand Opens were once again a credit to our region, and I thank the organisers for showcasing our sport and local expertise to the world. Feedback from players to BWF regarding these events has been very positive. To have events of this calibre in Oceania is vital for the profile and corporate support of the sport as both tournaments attracted some of the best players in the world. We do, however need to ensure that we continue to provide tournaments, at all levels, for our players within the region to both enable them to gain world ranking points but also for the development opportunities they provide for our technical officials and event organisers. Our new website was launched in May; this is an excellent resource as it contains an extensive amount of information and is kept up to date and current. Our Communications Manager – Tom, has done an outstanding job across all areas of communications; an internal weekly “Making It Happen” publication to keep all staff informed about what each other is working on, a monthly e-newsletter distributed to stakeholders and an ever increasing social media presence and following. Our development programmes, managed by Nadia, Robbie, Ian, Monte and Kini continue to grow with some impressive statistics backing up the hard work they all put into their respective areas.

Over the past 18 months the BWF has led a BWF-CC Governance project as we together work towards achieving greater harmonisation and alignment of governance rules and practices. This has been a big piece of work, including myself and Julie attending two meetings in Kuala Lumpur with the BWF and the other Continental Confederations for some high level and in-depth discussions followed by many conference calls and emails. This included an audit of our website to ensure we had full transparency and a review of our constitution, which we had only just reviewed in 2016. Finally, in November we arrived at a point where we could present the full Executive Board with the proposed constitution amendments; following this the Executive Board have approved amendments which have been distributed to Members for acceptance at our 2020 AGM in February.

We now have 9 staff members, a combination of both full-time and part-time, based both in the office in Auckland and around the region. I am confident our Members and BWF realise and appreciate your commitment as we are now delivering more and better programmes across a wide range of areas to our Members.

I extend my personal thanks to all our staff, they really go above and beyond the call of duty. I really appreciate the enthusiasm and personal dedication to not only Oceania but the sport as we continue to take our sport forward. It is testament to your efforts that we are in an excellent position to continue on our journey. Well done and thank you.

Thank you to the BWF for their ongoing support and confidence in us to deliver on our plans and budgets. Each year we are receiving increased financial and personnel support which also comes with increased obligations and expectations around good governance and good management, which we continually work hard to achieve.

I look forward to a successful 2020 and thank my Vice President Nigel, Executive Board members: Glenn, Johanna, Leody, Loke Poh and Ngaoa for their efforts during the year.