By any measure, 2009 was an unbelievably successful year for our Junior Bears. Of our 2200 juniors, over 500 trialled for 200 representative places and we expect even more players to trial this year.

Ten of our 20 junior representative teams reached Grand Finals in the Sydney Junior Championships, (SJC), 4 played off for State titles. With 7 SJC and 2 State titles under our belt, I wanted to say congratulations and thank you to everyone involved.

If you were new to the programme last season, Ithink it is important to reflect that our ‘overnight’ success in 2009 is the result of over 10 years of dedicated effort by past and present volunteers, and our Club management to:

· Build participation, competitiveness and depth into a well run local competition;

· Provide Club members’ opportunities to acquire playing, coaching and refereeing skills,

· Build and manage one of the best playing facilities in Sydney, and

· To ensure the Norths Club is financially robust.

Success itself brings challenges to the Club – the ambition and expectations of participants’ increases yearly, and we are working to meet these. The coming appointment of experienced coaches to the Gender Head Coaches are examples of the Clubs commitment to meeting expectations of the Rep programme.

In addition, we are ensuring the Clubs Development team offer more opportunities and Clinics throughout the season for our junior players to work on their individual and team skills. These will be run by our Representative Manager Miro Popovic, and our two Development Officers Luke Brennan and Chris McKibbins.

The fees collected from participants in the Clinics assist the Club, in part, to bridge the substantial gap ($100k) between the cost of the Junior representative programme, and the fees charged to representative players – so we ask you to support any Norths hosted clinic.

Miro, Chris and Luke also play a leading role in the selection of representative teams, and in assisting Team Coaches in team training, so there is a significant benefit to players being seen at these Clinics throughout the year.

Your Board has also asked Club Management to look at ways of continuing to improve the ongoing competitiveness and greater parity in our local competition, as this feeds the strength of our rep teams. We will review the recommendations and keep you informed of potential improvements. One way you can help, is to ensure your competition team isn’t ‘stacked’ with representative players.

With trials scheduled to begin in October, Club management and the Board have reviewed the trials process. Based on feedback, Miro will introduce some amendments to build on the successful process we employed last year. What worked particularly well was the inclusion of independent selectors to complement the Age Coaches, Miro, Chris and Luke, in selecting representative squads. We did have specific feedback and concern from members regarding the conflicts inherent where Norths rep Coaches provide their services outside of the Club or in local competitions on a commercial basis receiving payment from parents of players they will be viewing as a coach / selector. We will be especially diligent this year to ensure any conflicts of interest of this nature, are well managed and mitigated.

Thank you again to the many volunteers – our Club is a Community organisation whose present and future success is based on you giving freely and selflessly of your time. We very much appreciate it.

To all the adults involved in Norths JRP, may I gently remind you that your word and deeds are mirrored in actions and words of our young players, all of us have to work towards making Norths the most competitive and – even more importantly - most sporting Association in the Sydney Junior Championships.

Go the Mighty Bears!

Peter FitzSimons