October so time to turn our thoughts to the Wintercompetitions for the 2019-2020 NH season and beyond which are the Ten To Follow Competition (TTF) historically administered by Diamond Geezer, the Ante-Post Competition (AP) administered by NewApproach as well as the Winter Competition (WC), the result of which is calculated using a formula devised and administered by Grey and based on the finishing positions in the TTF, combined with the most valuable pre-Festival portfolios and profitable portfolios in the AP..
The recent sponsors of our three competitions generously agreed to offer a sum of £100, namely swedish chef for the TTF, Grasshopper for the AP and Grey for the WC whilst Roddy Owen and Perpetual put up £50 each for subsidiary prizes. You may recall swedish chef (David) advised at the end of last season's competition that he did not wish to continue sponsoring the TTF competition and I stated it would be a good time for me to step down as administrator as well in order to give a new partnership a turn. I have been in touch with Grassy (Nick) over the weekend who says he is out of love with the game at present and will only be looking in occasionally if at all so does not wish to sponsor the AP Competition anymore. We also appear to have lost Roddy who does not post anymore and who used to sponsor the prize for top scoring Dark Horse in the TTF. Perpetual (Ben) however would continue to sponsored the most valuable portfolio in the AP comp if we proceed and NewApproach (Faye) would continue to run it. Grey will kindly continue his role with the Winter Competition for one more season.
Looking at the longer term, we need some new people to start getting involved quickly if the competitions are to go ahead this year and in the future. If the pool of participants and sponsors continues to decline it will soon be hard to keep going and whilst not everyone's cup of tea the the competitions have played a big part in helping Talking Horses survive longer than some of the other forums, but we are on the same downward trend as the rest of them.
Both TTF and AP competitions are scheduled to start on November 1st this season. Formats would remain the same for all three competitions unless a new administrator for the TTF wishes to run it differently. Whilst the preferred option would be for someone else to run the TTF if it means we can continue with it I will run it again but only if we have sponsors supporting it.
Thoughts? Offers !