Committee Meeting 17/06/2024
Participating: Jacob, Jon, Simon, Sofie, Stephanie & Zorn
Minutes by: Jon
1. Round table:
Sofie – Head of Ladies
Still missing shirts for the kit is still missing – will follow up.
3 of the ladies are going for DM Sevens in Aalborg. The last two years we paid members 200kr back for the train trip. This year we will give them a full refund of 463kr instead, as communication was not clear. We do not intend for this to be a precedence for future years.
We’ll also be sending a team to Scandinavian 7s.
Our coach played a game with the Men’s team last week, and managed to tear a ligament in his leg, so he will be out for a bit.
We’ll be training over the summer, and will as usual want to train with the Men’s team, if there isn’t enough players around. We might make a new WhatsApp group chat again this year, for those Summer Sesh’s.
4 women from the team played for the national team this year. We will be looking into the possibility of refunding the travel costs from going to Helsinki.
Exiles Ladies, Speed, Frederiksberg and CSR have sent a complaint about the tournament schedule to DRU. The reply was a little disingenuous and disappointing.
Ladies arranged a training session for the U19 elite women’s handball team, as a teambuilding exercise, to build up their contact resistance. In turn they will arrange a training session in the future for our ladies.
They also promised to give tickets to a league game, for the whole ladies team.
Zorn – Head of Men’s
We had some wins in the last season, though unfortunately one of them was because the other team didn’t show up.
We got spot tested for drugs again, and none of our players we’re caught doing anything they shouldn’t.
Numbers are good, though unfortunately a few members have been injured recently.
In addition, Loulou is leaving. He has been a dedicated player and coach over the last years. Him leaving is a big loss for the team, but we wish him all the best in his future journey.
We’re short some shirts in the kit. Some were given away, but others have just not been returned. We will need replacements soon, which can probably wait for next year.
Still waiting for a delivery of new socks.
Will soon update Holdsport with the new games that are added after the first part of the season. No one in our team, or any others that Zorn has spoken to, like the new Tournament Schedule.
We’re not going to DM 7s. There was some issue with communication with DRU, which first had us not able to go, and then able to go – but at that point we had told our players we wouldn’t go.
6 guys are currently interested in Scandinavian 7s, which is a few short of a good team. So it’s debatable whether we want to pay to send the team. The committee decides that we should send the team, betting that the last players will come.
Preben has asked us to host a development day on the 28th of September. Development Days have not been very successful so far. Some have been cancelled and others have had very few attendees. It might have to do with there not being any contact at these events, and not all teams are interested in doing shared trainings. For example, few from our team felt like going to Hundested to potentially just play touch.
Ignasi and Zorn will work together to find a good way of arranging this event.
Zorn has secured a new Underberg Truck!
Jacob – DTU Liaison
Henrik from DTU Sports retired and a new person, Thor, has taken his position. Jacob and Zorn are planning a meeting with Thor on the 24th of June.
Our pitch is safe for this season. They are now constructing on the small football pitch next to ours, which is therefore no longer available.
Jacob tells us about the DSE Convention.
Jacobs 5 year plan has him become Captain of the Exiles and join the National team. Us in the committee are cheering him on!
Ignasi – Recruitment Secretary
Ignasi arrives 48 minutes late. He brought a pillow.
Ignasi has written to the hosts of the DSE Convention to which we have been invite, to get more information about the event. It lists that it includes dinner, which we don’t understand.
Recruitment time is coming again for the next part of the season. We’ll have a recruitment event in the last week of August. Now people who started last September will have to step up and help with recruitment, especially since Ignasi might not be in the country at that time.
Last semester DTU did the Student Fair in November, which is terrible recruitment time for us. Ignasi have written DTU about this, asking them to do it earlier, and it seems they are now doing a fair at an earlier time.
We’ve been trying to get into the Bachelors Intro week, but are now giving up on it. They are not interested in organizing anything with us. Instead we will try to hand out flyers when they had their math exam, which will be a good time to catch them. Jacob will help out with this.
The Rugby Family idea Ignasi had a year ago didn’t end up working exactly as planned, but at least for the guys it had helped establish more avenues of communication. More people also seem to have stayed on lately, which might be affected by this system.
The Rookie Initiation Day that we did last year was very popular, so we want to do that again this year after the home game on the 21st of September.
We should consider making more friendlies. Especially since we now have so many players that not everyone will play on game days. So it would be good to have more friendlies where newer players are prioritised.
Ignasi leaves early.
Pfft.
Stephanie – Social Secretary
Jesper the new manager of Bootleggers Nørreport is very chill. Greg hasn’t been able to meet, but Steph will catch up with soon.
Rugby 7s Olympics is coming, so we will be arranging something for that. Stephanie will have Bootleggers Nørrebro show it, and ask people to go there.
There’s also Autumn Internationals for later.
We’ll arrange a Summer BBQ after training on the 27th of June. It would be nice to make a “fun” shared training and end a bit early.
Simon – Treasurer
We’ve got 200k in the account. Getting people to pay subs has been going really well this year – credit to “Head’s of” for their effort in getting those in.
We have some big bills to pay, mostly for bus trips, which have gotten more expensive this year. Especially a trip to Aalborg this year was expensive, since two teams that would normally travel with us decided to go their early and sleep instead. We got a couple more bus trips coming and some payments for Scandinavian 7s.
The new license thing has been a shit show. We’ve paid for over 60 men, which is a mistake that we need to make them aware of.
DTU wanted our account, budged and members of the club, which Simon has sent to Signe to forward.
We talked a bit about licenses with the new system, and the Holdsport/Klubmodul systems.
Jon – Club Secretary
The hockey pitch we have been playing on in Lyngby, is going to be gone by the time winter training comes around. The Hockey team has been communicating with us about it, hoping that we could do something together. For them losing this pitch is a death sentence, since they are unable to use a pitch at Gentofte, due to their requirement of having 50% of members living in the commune.
Jon will try to reach out to Gentofte to hear about availability of their pitch during the winter season. That would also be a good step to get closer with Gentofte.
Holdsport is going well for the Men’s team. The players have adopted it, and for the first time ever, coaches are now able to see how many players are coming for trainings.
We talk about moving fully away from the Men’s and Ladies Facebook groups, and use Holdsport exclusively for the practical information.
2. DRU Tournament committee
DRU have asked for candidates for the tournament committee. We very much disagree with the decision they made last year, which created the current tournament structure.
We’ll therefore find two people in the club, one from each team, and put them forward for the position, so that we can have more of an impact on these decisions this time around.
There are four people on the DRU tournament committee.
3. Sponsorship opportunity
The committee discusses avenues for applications to a trust had to be set up to help with integrating foreigners into Danish society, particularly the younger generation.
As we all know, the Exiles have been doing that for 55 years so we may well be able to get some significant sponsorship from them.
We had a brainstorm on what projects we could come up with which show how we are succeeding in integrating youngsters into Danish society.
Impact from Exiles:
We help students get jobs in Denmark, at least a couple just this year.
We should get some testimonials written up from both young and older members. And not just people who play, but also those who attach themselves to the team.
We have a French girl on the Danish national team.
We tempt people to stay in Denmark.
Foreigners sometimes have a tough time meeting Danish people, but can easily meet them in the team.
Some of our players have decided to come back after their initial half year here, due to the great social life they go with The Exiles.
The team has over many years introducing rugby and the values to Denmark, and helped make room for foreigners who share those values.
Expats who join us become part of the bigger rugby community in Denmark.
Exiles are big on social life, inviting players out for events and experiences across the Copenhagen area.
Several Gentofte Rugby people are expats who started in Exiles. Now a new team has sprung up full of expat parents and kids.
Maybe we should get to make that online internal wall for older players to share opportunities with younger members.
Projects ideas that require money:
Clubhouse (difficult as always this one)
New pitch somewhere, in case DTU also soon wants our grounds.
Renting a new pitch for the winter to replace the Lyngby one.
4. DRU ½ year licenses
For this season the DRU have added fees for player licenses, which last a whole year. Signe has been communicating with Michael Lai about possible ½ year licenses.
He has suggested having a ½ year license at half price (100kr), which would then count for either the spring or fall season. He then stipulates that it would only be allowed to have one for one or the other, not re-sign the license at the half year point. This would be to avoid misusing the system.
The committee discussed the subject, and plan to ask for a higher fee, potentially 125kr for half a year, but then allowing extension if requested. We don’t want to end up in a situation where a player ended up staying, but are then not able to play.
Or maybe if we wanted to extend someone who was there in the spring, we would then later be able to pay the full 200kr to make sure they could also play in the fall.
Our license fee is larger for half year than full year anyway, so our club should take little loss due to this.
5. AD&D
Steph says it’s not good news.
Happy Feet no longer rents out their room to external parties. It is now arranged through an intermediary company, that has fully booked the year.
Steph says another option has been found, but that one requires us to buy alcohol from them, or paying 450kr per person, to allow us to bring our own alcohol!
DTU might be an option, but there’s work and funds to be used on busses and renting cutlery. It might still be the best option available to us though.
Steph will continue with DTU, and find out which rooms they have available for the 23rd of November.
6. What do we allow on our social media?
Some recent posts in our Facebook Socials page and in WhatsApp group, have brought up a debate in the committee, with regards to how we should moderate those types of messages.
We end up decided that the committee will moderate both the Facebook and “official” WhatsApps groups.
This means content that is not related to Exiles or might harm people in our team, will be removed.
7. Other business
No other business