Restarting club F2F
Any ideas about how best to restart a club? We aim to restart early in July (government willing) with probably just a normal evening. I've been wondering how best to restart:
- with a delayed Christmas party
- an AGM
- no charge evening
- individual event to get people meeting up
- just like a normal club night
Any other thoughts and plans?
Alan
Comments
It's obviously hard to know what rules are likely to be in place, but the expectation is that some social distancing will remain in force. Therefore, if you want to plan ahead of time, the events most likely to run successfully are those with minimal movement and a minimal initial turnout. Something like a Mitchell pairs movement (or teams but no scoring up between rounds) with capacity dictated by regulations at the time would then be ideal.
With that in mind, a party format (especially if people are likely to shout across the room; depends what club atmosphere you have!) or an AGM (as you don't want to have turn people away for capacity reasons) are unlikely to be best for starters. No charge is good to avoid handling money. Individual events are not always the most popular anyway but they'll also maximise the number of players you meet which, in time, will be good but not for the moment.
It maybe the case that normality resumes instantaneously but I think that's a long shot, and the clubs I know are planning f2f restarts closer to September to give more planning time. Better to be able to offer f2f bridge when it becomes available and deliver on that as opposed to promising a party for the first session and not delivering I suppose.
Finally, as has been the case throughout the last year with these discussions, it's not just about the guidance but also the welfare and vulnerability of your members. If, for instance, 10% of your members say they want to wait and see how things are going, then restarting f2f is fine but holding an AGM in their absence is probably not desirable.
Maybe a Swiss movement? That would help to keep people mixing as little as possible, which might help to make things safer.
I'd imagine that you'd want a lot of preparation, though; probably making use of things like perspex screens, and separate boardsets for each table, while things are still in the process of getting back to normal. Bridge has got to be one of the highest-risk activities for coronavirus spread, so delaying face-to-face bridge as one of the last things to reopen makes sense.
Swiss is good in that it has fewer opponents, but it means everyone moving about which I suspect is worse. You can get Mitchell Swiss movements where all NS are stationary, but even then EW pairs will be overtaking one another.
As for coronavirus spread, that's less clear if I'm honest. The evidence suggests that sharing cards, bidding boxes etc. carries an almost zero risk as I understand it and there isn't much moving about, so the only problem is screens / how big your tables are.
Thanks but won't we back to normal in July? After all we'll all be able to go inside for a meal mid-May.
As per https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-response-spring-2021/covid-19-response-spring-2021-summary, Covid-Secure rules are expected to remain in place, which includes capacity limits and social distancing in some situations.