Members,
Well what a year. It’s turned out to be quite an unceremonious end to a cracking year at OMCC. The key highlights include:
- Our memberships continue to hover near club all-time highs
- We have run our first, and likely last, AMA Vic Titles at Argyle (oh the rain!)
- We’ve had our first 100+ entrants at trial in a number of years at Glenmaggie
- The club has run a significant number of training days for both adults and juniors, as well as hosted interstate coaches Neil Price & Chris Bayles.
- Tuesday 10am-2pm have been cemented in the calendar as a new opening day & proving very popular
- We continue ongoing ground works and delivery of rocks, logs and soil.
Sadly, our plans to continue the summer series we scuppered due to the AMA issue. We also wave goodbye to our friends at Southern Trials Riders and we wish Geoff and Gary all the best and thank them for the efforts over the last couple of years.
Thanks for your patience over the last two months while we’ve dealt with the withdrawal of AMA as a governing body and suppliers of the club’s public liability insurance. It left an enormous hole that we have all felt including a number of other clubs across the country. There have been a number of factors that have driven this including ceilings on the amount of risk the insurance underwriters are willing to take. I am pleased to say we are underway with our replacement and working on the final touches now. Further communications will come once we know the financial impacts to members.
Over the last two months multiple members of the committee have been hard at work exploring all avenues to obtain Public Liability insurance from a range of brokers (as have a number of other clubs also impacted by the loss of AMA). We have also been speaking regularly with other states affected clubs so we are all connected. The unique nature of OMCC with having…
- Its own club grounds
- Practice/Social riding multiple times per week & being a dominant part of our members use of the club
- Being an exclusive trials (low risk) discipline
- Volunteer run (no paid employees) and not for profit
- OMCC has had a fairly modest membership fee that hasn’t required “per ride” charges like MX parks.
…we felt a robust exploration of options was justified rather than taking the first option available. Sorry for the silence, but it’s taken time and we’ve been waiting for something meaningful before we communicated further.
The committee has decided in the last week that we will be reaffiliating with Motorcycling Victoria/Australia. We are exploring a custom policy arrangement which has required significant time to arrange as it’s not simply “off the shelf”. We are close to the final details and will share the changes to pricing structure this will cause to membership fees once it’s known.
We recognise a lot of our members are non-competitive, and so options for those who do not hold a competitive license are important in the final solution for our club.
There will likely be some flow down effects of this change including the use of Ridernet, training of club officials, and the expansion of First Aid training for officials and supervisors. The competitive calendar will be worked on shortly and OMCC will take part in the Victorian Trials Series.
We aim to resume social riding in January 2023 with more details to follow and to offset the lack of access to the club all 2022 memberships will be extended until March 2023.
Thanks again for your patience again and we wish all of you and your families a great Christmas break.
Regards, David Grice obo the OMCC Committee